UK professional poker player and co-founder of Black Belt Poker, Neil Channing has announced the online poker room will shut from midnight on 28 February.

Channing assures players that their funds are safe, held by parent skin Boylepoker “in a ring-fenced bank account”. Players are recommended to log in to their accounts by 28 February and request a withdrawal.

After this date, players can contact Boyle directly and request a withdrawal, but there the process is manual and the cashout may take longer.

Black Belt Poker is a skin on the iPoker network. Though not a top-tier skin, it built a UK-centric online community through its blogs, forums, and the continued engagement and promotion by Channing, who took the role of sponsored pro and blogger, and wore the Black Belt patch to live events.

“It’s now almost six years since I came up with an idea which I thought at the time could lead to a shake-up in the UK online poker market,” Channing wrote, on the Black Belt Poker forum. “Since that time I have worked tirelessly to try and develop the project and to build the Black Belt brand.

“Sadly sometimes in life you just have to accept that things are not working and you need to move on. That time has come with Black Belt Poker.

“All that remains is for me to thank everyone who invested, who worked hard for us, who were sponsored by us, who participated in poker discussions on our website and particularly those who played on Black Belt Poker.”