The online gambling bill in the US has proved one obvious thing - force one popular company away and others will just take its place.

As publicly traded companies such as Partygaming closed its doors to US players, other online poker sites were happily keeping their doors open and just watched the rush.

Both Pokerstars.com and Bodog.com - 2 of the largest online gambling companies in the world have decided to defy the US's ban and keep offering its products to US players.

One of the major hurdles to overcome the ban was always going to be the transfer of money - essentially the core of the ban. But conversely, its the enforcement of this bill that could be the stumbling block for US authorities.

Most, if not all online gambling companies already use e-wallets rather than credit cards. Players have these e-wallets that are set up in offshore countries.

One of the biggest payment processor, the London-listed Neteller are playing a waiting game to see how the US are planning to enforce the bill. However, as with other publicly traded companies, their transparency forces them to play it safe and they also need to protect their non-gambling related services - a large percentage of the $7.3 billion transactions they process.

So where does that leave everybody? Most likely in the unwanted situation of players finding less transparent, more dubious places to play. By denying Partypoker et al entry into the market, private offshore companies will pop up everywhere - offering less regulation, less protection and ultimately the potential for players money to end up in criminal hands.

It all sounds very familiar.

It was getting late on Oct. 12, the night before a sweeping anti-Internet gambling bill would be signed into law. Paul McGuire was at his computer, enjoying one last hurrah on PartyPoker, a site that had pledged to kick off all U.S. users as soon as the law left President Bush's desk. "It was kind of like that last party before summer ends when you've got to go back to school," says McGuire, a 34-year-old New Yorker and author of the popular "Tao of Poker" blog. "They were playing loose because it was the last night." Maybe for some.

Not McGuire, whose online handle is "Dr. Pauly." At 11 p.m., he simply closed down his PartyPoker account, withdrawing thousands of dollars in winnings accumulated in recent weeks. He later wired the funds to an offshore account with NETeller, an Internet bank registered in the Isle of Man, and opened new accounts with two other poker sites-both of them privately owned.

So much for the U.S. crackdown on Internet gambling. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act is designed to halt the flow of the roughly $6 billion that flows each year from U.S. gamblers to foreign Internet casinos by officially barring credit card companies and other U.S. financial institutions from processing illegal wagers. The Justice Dept. has long maintained that online poker gambling, like sports betting, violates terms of the 1961 Wire Act.

But within hours of the new bill's signing, McGuire was back online, betting on hands of Texas Hold 'Em-and he was not alone. He's now wagering through PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com, both licensed by the Canadian Mohawk territory of Kahnawake and happily taking U.S. customers. (PokerStars also has a license with the government of the Isle of Man, where it is headquartered.) Both sites saw record numbers of players the weekend following the law's adoption, according to Louisiana's Casino City, which monitors traffic on online poker sites in its trade journals.

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