After using his online gambling winnings to foot the bill for his car insurance and living expenses, Jesse Chinni was dealt a losing hand when Congress passed legislation this weekend banning the profitable online diversion.

The new legislation “hurts me a lot because I pay for college strictly from online poker,” said Chinni, a junior economics major.

Legislators unexpectedly attached a measure to a port security bill Saturday which bans credit card, check and electronic fund transfers for online gambling. But websites such as PokerStars.com weren’t the only ones to take a huge financial hit this weekend. The new regulation has sent some students scrambling to find new sources of income and disentagle their money from the gambling sites they used.

Though online gambling is illegal in most states, Americans were able to get around the regulations by betting on sites operated in other countries.

When Congress closed the loophole this weekend, Joe Rogers, a junior economics major and Chinni’s roommate, scrambled to take his money off of the Costa Rica-based PokerStars because he said he feared his online assets could be frozen. PokerStars, the second-largest online poker operation in the world, captures most of its revenue from U.S. customers.

“Everyone I’ve talked to is really scared about” the new rules, Rogers said.

Rogers said he netted about $110,000 this year in online poker – a figure that would be higher, he said, if not for his losses on sports betting. Starting small in high school with $50 bets, Rogers said the stakes now run as high as $15,000 or $20,000.

Senior mechanical engineering major Ryan Fisher said he is only a casual player, earning about $5,000 over the last few months, but said he knows people who pay the rent gambling online.

Despite the new regulations, few seemed to think online gambling is gone for good.

“It’s way too big an industry not to have someone making money off of it,” Rogers said.

That’s exactly what Michael Osborne, executive director of the Compulsive Gambling Center in Baltimore, is worried about.

“This really isn’t that great or significant a step toward shutting gambling sites down,” said Osborne, who said the convenience of online poker is luring younger and younger people into gambling addiction.

Jonathan J. Kandell, assistant director of the university counseling center, agrees.

“It’s very seductive,” he said. “It provides people the opportunity who wouldn’t normally go to a gaming establishment.”

Kandell said he hasn’t had many students who seek counseling for gambling problems on their own, but a few have been referred by advisers after they started dropping classes to gamble and earn money to pay back their losses.

“In the past couple of years it’s become more of a problem,” he said.

The last five patients at the compulsive gambling center were between 19 and 24 and gambled online, Osborne said. He said he has no confidence that Congress will directly ban the sites though, saying legislators have little appetite for drawing attention to the problem of gambling because it contributes so much to state coffers in its legal form. He cited the Maryland State Lottery, which contributed more than $501 million to the state budget in fiscal year 2006.

Osborne said most students will get around the new restrictions by using services like Western Union to wire money offshore.

Chinni is already considering his options until he turns 21 in a couple of months and can legally gamble. He said sites such as FirePay.com and Netteller.com are possibilities. Both sites are used to fund online gambling by wiring money offshore directly from personal bank accounts.

Many in the gambling establishment would like to see online gambling made legal, a move they say would actually do more to keep minors off of gambling sites than restricting them.

“A U.S.-regulated industry would be set up so that minors couldn’t gamble,” said Holly Thomson, a spokeswoman for the American Gaming Association. “No one I’ve talked to wants minors gambling.”

The American Gaming Association represents some of the largest gambling companies in the United States, including MGM Mirage, not all of which support legalization.

Legal or not, for now students are looking for ways around the new rules.

Fisher said he thinks most students are waiting to see which sites are still operating. Popular operations, such as the company 888 Holdings PLC and Partygaming, have already suspended their U.S. operations.

Chinni and Rogers have put most of their money in the bank, but chose to transfer a few thousand to a site called Fulltiltpoker.com, which is still operating.

“I really think it’ll be just like illegal downloading,” Chinni said “They’ll find ways around it.”

Contact reporter Andrew Vanacore at vanacoredbk@gmail.com.