AT THIS VEGAS DOME, IT'S `POKER ON STEROIDS'.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

LAS VEGAS -- So this is what the alleged sport of televised poker has come to.

The studio audience can ogle the nervous table of contestants, but the players can't see out because of a one-way, soundproof glass. Like an enlarged version of Maxwell Smart's Cone of Silence.

Each of the six supposed card sharks wears a strap around their chest to monitor their heartbeat, for the sole purpose of entertainment. Palpitations are encouraged.

Chips are imbedded into each card so the graphics technicians in another dark room know what'll turn up seconds after they leave the dealer's hand and already have it up on the screen. The blinding floor spotlights tilt up and then fall, just like on ``Who Wants to be a Millionaire?'' The ongoing musical score pulsates and the background colors change in concert with the action, intensifying as the final cards of Texas Hold 'Em are turned over.

As if most of downtown Las Vegas wasn't scary enough, the new Poker Dome should be entered at your own risk, the ``Monster House'' for adults brave enough not to fold before they make it to center stage.

``This is poker on steroids,'' admits a remarkably less-than-frenzied John Faratzis, the multiple Emmy Award winning network lead producer on network Super Bowls and Olympics who now embraces the role of executive producer for the Mansionpoker.net Poker Dome Challenge that tapes each Saturday night and is edited fast enough to air about 24 hours later on Fox Sports Net.

The public's first look at this first-of-its-kind, 80-foot by 40-foot Poker Dome, carved out of three existing movie theatres at a third-level cineplex anchoring a city mall known as Neonopolis, where Fremont Street glides into Las Vegas Blvd., will be on tonight's 11 p.m. episode.

The 43-week tournament that gathers relatively unknown online winners from around the country at the sponsor's Web site is already nine episodes in, having played the first part at a makeshift studio down the street at the Tropicana Hotel.

The whole thing took a reported $6.5 million of investor Rick Kulis' cold cash to erect and four-plus months of gaming licensing red tape and finishing touches to get up and running.

``You can't find a better facility for poker than this one,'' boasts Kulis, a technical pioneer in closed-circuit boxing promotions and pay-per-view entrepreneur who once had the vision to put $33 million on the table with the NCAA a few years back, hoping to stage a true national college football championship game. ``There are more cameras in here than for a Super Bowl.''

To stand out from the stacks of poker-playing options in a money-sucking city where this game claims to have been launched is a card trick unto itself. About three miles away, the sweaty crowds trying to get out of the 110-degree heat are packing into the Rio to be in the same ballroom where some of poker's greatest names -- Brunson, Hellmuth, Chan and something called the Unibomber -- are forking out a $10,000 buy-in to be part of the nearly record 9,000 entered in the 2006 World Series of Poker, which will run until Aug. 10.

The final table -- a pay-per-view event this year -- won't be on ESPN until it's edited down in November, but the network still expects a healthy rating. The winner, who'll take more than $11 million from an $80 million pot, will be crowned at Binion's Casino -- just two blocks west from the Poker Dome home.

Anyone tired of craning their neck to see what's going on during live play at the WSOP might want to venture into the 150-plus seat Poker Dome studio audience and prepare to be bombarded with information as the Mansionpoker.net version kicks it into what it calls speed poker -- faster decisions are necessary because a timer is in place in front of each player, as the lights on the table count down the seconds left to raise bets or fold. And the whole event gets onto TV faster than any other card show.

The contestants are hardly professionals, having sat in their bathrobes at home in front of their computer monitors with no buy-in to earn this trip to Vegas. As if the Dome isn't intimidating enough, some are more spooked at the fact they're having to hold actual cards and chips, then need to interact with other real people.

``We're different from all the others because we have a series driven by the audience -- it's made for, and played by, the audience,'' said Gary Garcia, FSN's executive producer for all its poker events and one of the brains behind the Poker Dome's construction. ``You'll see a soccer coach or a plumber win $25,000 one night, and maybe $1 million by the time it's over.''

George Greenberg, FSN's executive VP of programming and production, says this Poker Dome concept is merely cranking Fox Sports chief David Hill's vision of a unique visual and audio experience to another level with added layers of drama. Hill tried to make poker a regular Fox program eight years ago, but not until the technology of minicameras were developed a few years ago to show the hole cards did poker really explode as a TV event picked up in some version by all-sports channels looking for the coveted 18-to-34 aged male audience.

Poker Dome, in turn, pushes TV card-counting technology to a level seen only in major sporting events.

``Our ratings have almost doubled on poker than from another program in the time slots,'' Greenberg said. ``I hardly see poker on TV petering out. We're in for the long haul here.''

In that case, let the techno-charged chips fall where they may.

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) The set of the Poker Dome in Las Vegas will play host to online winners from the Mansionpoker.net Web site.

Fox Sports Net

(2) The Poker Dome is carved out of three existing movie theatres at a third-level cineplex anchoring a Las Vegas mall known as Neonopolis.

Tom Hoffarth/Daily News