(fade in to Doug and D.J. seated in directors' chairs on an empty/barren Net Poker Live! set; large screen monitor displays the "Net Poker: The Real Deal" logo in an empty auditorium at the Bonus Island Resort and Casino)

D.J.: Welcome back to the Net Poker 5th anniversary special. Ya'll know me - D.J. Hamilton. We'll get back to the game later in the show. And in a moment, for the first time ever, you'll see clips from the pilot episode of Net Poker. But first, we begin our first segment of Net Poker: The Real Deal -- with our host with the most, Doug Morris.

Doug: (laughs) Ah, thanks, Deej.

D.J.: Wow, Doug, five years of Net Poker. Whodathunkit?

Doug: Yeah, indeed. Originally, I was going to use this as a bit of a "filler" between hosting assignments on the Net Match Game - Hollywood Squares Hour and Net ShowDown - back when we did Net ShowDown - and, yeah, over time, Net Poker just managed to take on an identity in of itself.

D.J.: So, tell the folks how it all started.

Doug: (impersonating Ted Baxter) It all started at a 5000-watt radio station in Fresno, California.

D.J.: (laughs) No it didn't.

Doug: Not quite. But it did sort of start after I cut my workday short due to illness. After I told the boss I'm taking half a sick day, I went home, turned on ESPN and saw their coverage of the 2002 World Series of Poker. And as I was watching, I remembered that really dumb game show that was on late at night - "Strip Poker".

Now, I'll admit, as someone who was a bachelor at the time, I enjoyed seeing the women gradually disrobe. But it was pretty obvious to me the producers intentionally booked dumb contestants with great bodies. And then as now I believed through all that silliness - there was a great game in there that was really waiting to blossom.

So I took a few elements here, some there, mixed well and, voila, there's Net Poker.

D.J.: There it is indeed. Now, we're going to see the pilot as you mentioned shortly. But as we take a look at the clip from the first round, you'll see it looked a bit different from what ended up in the series.

Doug: Yeah, for starters, we didn't use the multiple choice questions with "all of the above" and "none of the above" that we used often until and throughout the first tournament of champions; the wordplay categories, of course came after that inaugural tournament. Also in the pilot, the second and final rounds had different names. Elimination Poker became 5-Card Poker. Championship Poker became Joker Poker. Now Championship Poker - not a bad name for a round. But Elimination Poker, what was I thinking?

D.J.: Oh, yeah, and what *were* you thinking - (playfully hits Doug) when you didn't even include *me* as the dealer?

Doug: (laughs) Well, I thought originally we'd have you as the dice girl when we had Net ShowDown up and going - and to give Net Poker a separate identity, why not a separate co-hostess? So that's how Haley Fox came in the picture.

D.J.: All right. We'll talk more about Net Poker in a moment. But first - enjoy the first round of the pilot episode of Net Poker.

ADVANCE TO PILOT