After being in business for a decade, SunPoker has just announced that they are closing their poker room doors for good, effective immediately. In a form letter sent to all account holders, SunPoker’s management cited the September changes to the iPoker network as the reason for closing their poker room. Their company will continue to provide internet casino services at Omni Casino. All SunPoker accounts and player balances have already been transferred to Omni Casino.

SunPoker opened their site in 2002 under the name “Caribbean Sun Poker” on the now defunct Cryptologic Network. Traffic on the Crypto network was strong and SunPoker prospered for a while, up until 2006 when U.S. players were banned following the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Traffic at the network began to drop off, causing SunPoker to move to the iPoker network. Shortly after the move, the Crypto network closed down in March of 2009. On the iPoker network, SunPoker grew slowly and wasn’t ever able to become one of the top skins.

In September, the iPoker network split into two separate No-Limit cash game and Sit-N-Go player pools. The motives behind the move were not 100% clear, but it seems that the idea was to have the skins with a larger and more “recreational” player base hosted on iPoker 2. Skins that didn’t make this cut were relegated to iPoker 1. The result was that iPoker 2 maintained a large cash game player base, especially at the lower stakes.

The smaller sites on iPoker 1 maintained decent traffic at the higher limits (200NL+), but suffered greatly in the amount of active lower stakes games. Multi-table tournaments, Omaha, Speed Hold’em and Limit Hold’em player pools remain shared across all iPoker skins.

SunPoker was one of the smaller skins that were forced onto iPoker 1, and evidently were no happy with the result. In the form letter, management explained: “we can no longer provide our valued members the poker experience they have come to know and enjoy at SunPoker”.

They go on to explain that they will be focusing their efforts on their flagship brand: Omni Casino. Their internet casino has been in business for 15 years and boasts a wide selection of brand name casino games.