You know you're not watching "Big Brother" or "America's Next Top Model" when a show features a challenge centered around... chess.

Sure, chess is not the most visually exciting game to watch so TBS's new "King of the Nerds" jazzes it up with a life-size chess board and brings out a gladiator-type man to "kill" the pawns and other chess pieces in grandiose fashion with a sword. It debuts Thursday, January 17 at 10 p.m.

Otherwise, the formula should be familiar to anybody who has watched any reality competition show. There are 11 contestants who want to be "King" nerd and pocket $100,000. They live in a house together. One person is eliminated each week via challenges involving Segways, remote control golf carts and Sumo wrestling outfits.

The creators are veteran actors who starred in the 1984 film "Revenge of the Nerds," Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong.

Atlanta-based TBS has been seeking unscripted reality programming that fit its mold. This one does because the network has been riding high with big ratings for repeats of CBS's "The Big Bang Theory." (In its sixth season, this very funny sitcom about nerds is hitting series high numbers, partly fueled by TBS's frequent airings of older episodes.)

In effect, it's rare compatability between a reality show and a scripted show.  "That should give us a lot of mileage," Carradine said.

The 11 contestants range from gamers to scientists to engineers to comic book experts. One guy was a master hacker. "It runs the gamut of all things nerdy," Carradine noted.

One of the guys has local ties: 23-year-old Jon Paproki, a PhD student in math at UCLA who recently graduated Georgia Tech, where he double majored in physics and math."Most people thought I was crazy," he said in a phone interview last month. "Masochist! I am a masochist. I just like working hard." (His nickname, based on his last name: Pop Rocks.)

He gets a lot of attention in the first episode, notably for his love of hard-rock music and hard-partying persona. "He's a brilliant mathematician but at the same time, he's like a John Belushi character," Carradine said. "The last thing you'd expect from a nerd is to be a headbanger!"

"I miss the free beer," Jon said, of his experience on the show. "It was good beer, too."

In school, he'd work all day Sunday through Thursdayk, then party big time at a frat (Psi Upsilon) Friday and Saturday. "I crammed my socializing into two days a week," he said. The frat actually accepted women. "Half the frat were comp sci majors," he added. "Most of the rest were engineering or some kind of sciences. We'd have Lord of the Rings marathons downstairs and play board games all hours of the day and night."

He also loves "Burning Man" fesitvals, where he has built stuff such as a geodesic dome for a bar. At one Burning Man event, he said he helped erect a giant pyramid shooting flames into the air. "I like the people" at Burning Man, he said., "They're inclusive and friendly. What you do in the real world does not matter there. You only care about what's going on now."

Jon chose to join "King of the Nerds" because he likes novel experiences. "It's something interesting to do once," he said. "It turned out to be a lot of fun. It's hard to assemble such an extraordinary group of people."

Overall, he aid, "I'm pretty thick-skinned. I don't care what other people think of me." He said he tries to get along with folks by focusing on something he likes about them, rather than the stuff that annoys him.

As for geeky activities, he is not really into video games. He enjoys sci-fi novels and TV shows but said he wasn't as into them as most of the other cast members. (The guy has never paid to attend Dragon*Con but has attended the notoriously crazy late-night parties at the hotels after hours by borrowing a friend's pass.)

Jon said he didn't see any real romance though there was some flirting. "Most of us have significant others," he said, including him. His girlfirend, he said, goes to Georgia Tech and graduates in the spring.

On TV

"King of the Nerds," 10 p.m. Tuesdays, starting January 17, TBS