Imagine walking into work tomorrow and all of your co-workers are trying to take your money. You don’t mind, though, because you’re trying to take theirs.

Sometimes, you can get $5,000 out of them in a day; other days, you have to give that much away. Depends how good you are.

Something you’d want to do for a living?

Canandaigua’s Steve Goodemote not only does it, he loves every second of it. Goodemote, 24, is a professional poker player. He doesn’t go to a day job and play poker at night. Poker is his job.

Goodemote plays predominately online. He spends anywhere from 20 to 25 hours a week playing cards on some of the countless poker Web sites available on the Internet.

He tends to play in 10-person tournaments, and the top three get paid. Everyone usually buys in for $200 — winner takes $1,000. He’ll play in four of these tournaments at the same time. It maximizes his profit.

Other times, he’ll play in no-limit Texas hold 'em cash games. Everyone at the table will buy in for a certain amount, and pots range from several hundred to several thousand dollars. He plays many of these tables at the same time as well. More tables equal more money for Goodemote.

How much money we talking? In 2005, he made $80,000 doing nothing but playing poker. He is already over $100,000 in earnings this year.

Goodemote started playing the game with friends during lunch at his high school outside Buffalo. They played for fun, sometimes for a few bucks. He was learning the game.

And he started getting better.

He played throughout college, all at low stakes and in live games with friends. In 2003, he decided to deposit $20 in an Internet poker account in an effort to try his luck against players across the world. He was up and down for a few months but still playing off that $20. Then one day, he placed second in a large tournament and won $500, his first major score. With a bigger bankroll, Goodemote decided to play in a larger tournament later in the week. He bought in for $50 in a tourney of 1,200 people and won. He got $10,000 for his efforts and hasn’t made another deposit since.

“After that cash, I decided I was going to start taking this a little more seriously,” Goodemote said. “It may have given me some false confidence in my game, as I still wasn’t that good yet. But it also gave me a glimpse into what was possible.”

Goodemote was working as a freelance Web designer during college — he graduated from SUNY at Buffalo in December 2004 with a degree in management information systems — but after graduation, he decided he’d had enough and wanted to concentrate fully on poker.

That first year was good to him as he took home nearly six figures. This year has been even better, including one of the highlights of his poker career.

Many of the Internet sites offer qualifying tournaments for the World Series of Poker, the largest poker tournament in the world, held every year in Las Vegas. Goodemote won one of those tournaments and received a $10,000 buy-in — the cost of the WSOP — to play in the main event. Out of the 8,800 people in the July tournament, Goodemote finished in 109th place and took home more than $51,000.

“It was an amazing experience, and finishing so high was beyond my wildest dreams,” he said. “It has been my biggest payday by far.”

Family life

Living the single life, playing poker affected no one but Goodemote. It was his money, and only he was accountable to the good and bad times.

But Goodemote and his new wife, Jenny, young-adult librarian at the Wood Library in Canandaigua, got engaged in July 2005 and married a few months ago. He was no longer looking out only for himself but also for a spouse who depended on his success.

“When I first knew he was going to play professionally, I was uncomfortable about it,” Jenny Goodemote said. “And I was for a while. I come from a conservative family, and I am not a risk-taker. When I realized it wasn’t an addiction, and when he won the $10,000, I thought he really might be onto something here.”

Convincing her family wasn’t as easy.

“My parents are pretty old-fashioned,” she said. “I remember the first time our mothers met, my mom said to his, ‘I just hope Steve can support my daughter.’ They are still skeptical, I think, but they see we are doing well and not just living off my salary.”

She also gets mixed reactions to the oft-asked question, “What does your husband do for a living?”

“Some people think it’s the coolest thing in the world, while others think it’s not safe and believe there is no way he can make a living out of it,” she said. “You never know what you will get. I don’t really care, though, because I know he treats it just like a job.”

Goodemote keeps to a regular schedule, playing from 1 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. five days a week. He keeps most of his winnings in his online poker account, but does take money out to pay bills and for everyday needs.

“I do spend my money,” he said. “I drive a nice car and have a big television, but I don’t go crazy.”

At first it was hard for his wife to keep calm when she would come home from work to find that her husband had lost a few thousand dollars in a day, but she has grown used to it.

“She has been very supportive of me,” he said. “Like any other couple, I tell her how I did during the course of the day. I don’t always go into dollar-for-dollar amount, but we discuss it. She has gotten to the point where she is my biggest supporter and will pick me up if I had a bad day.”

The bad days will come, and Goodemote says the hardest part of being a professional player is handling the swings.

“You can play your best and sometimes things won’t go your way,” he said. “Handling the ups and downs is the most difficult part. You have to stay confident but not cocky. The game is 100 percent skill in the long term and 100 percent luck in the short term. In the long run, the good players will come out on top.”

Goodemote keeps track of all his winnings and is taxed like a small business. Playing Internet poker is legal for the player, although steps are being taken at the federal level to shut down these online operations, which are run overseas. Banks are no longer allowed to accept deposits from many of these gaming sites, but online bank accounts such as Neteller still allow deposits to and from most sites.

“I am not real worried about all that,” he said. “I am just upset because it portrays poker in a negative light. People may believe it’s criminal — if they are misinformed — and the ones on the fence about playing online may choose not to.”

The future

Goodemote sees himself doing this as a career as long as it stays profitable. “I like the freedom that it offers,” he said.

The immediate future is bright. Before the start of the WSOP, he registered for some free merchandise at a booth set up by a poker magazine, agreeing in return to wear their T-shirt throughout the course of the event. Turns out he was the last remaining player wearing their gear and won a free trip to Vegas, $1,000 spending money and free entry into the Poker Dome tournament. He will compete against one table of players with the winner receiving $25,000. A victory would advance him to a second table worth $50,000, and three straight wins would net him a cool million. His episode will air on the Fox Sports Network on Sunday, Nov. 26 at 11 p.m.

“I try not to set goals for myself because that way you can set yourself up for disappointment,” he said. “All you can do is play the cards you have in front of you to the best of your ability every time.”

No one will argue poker is an unsteady lifestyle. Every day can have its ups and downs. Goodemote knows that it’s certainly not for the faint-of-heart.

“The saying is true, it is a tough way to make an easy living,” he said. “I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. But if it’s in ya, it’s in ya.”