A bunch of people attending the Cash Game Festival London at Aspers Casino never before played poker in a casino. This was the case for Paxful Business Development and Sales Manager Matthew Manetta.

"This is my first time visiting a casino for poker, but my business partner has played a lot of poker and is a traveling poker player." Manetta said.

Manetta found that with some help he was able to learn and have a good experience. He also understood that the Cash Game Festival is as much about the people as it is about the five days of nonstop ring game action. Manetta dove straight onto a poker table with little knowledge and almost walked away a winner.

"I think it has been a really good learning experience," Manetta explained about his first time playing poker in a casino. "The people here are amazing and have helped me learn a lot. They coached me while I was playing, and all around a really great group of people at the Cash Game Festival. That's why I think it's been a nice event and I was really happy to meet all of these people. I was up early, but then at the end I was down £5 and got up."

If you are wondering what Manetta is doing at the Cash Game Festival despite not playing poker in a casino in the past, the answer is very simple. His company is now a partner of the festival and he wanted to attend to help develop contacts with the poker community, casinos, and others in the industry.

Paxful helps its customers exchange bitcoins and also helps vendors and customers process payments. Manetta explains a bit about what Paxful is.

"When the company began, it was to help people buy and sell Bitcoin. We see block-chain technology and crypto-currency are the future of banking. Now, we help out a lot of people that were unbanked to do a lot of transactions, pay bills, and do many other things. What we have been doing now is payment processing and we built a new widget that we just released to help casinos and gaming sites to accept any form of currency and payment option, which includes over 300 types, for their website or business. We can instantly get the transactions through with no chargebacks, it is cheaper than other payment options and not run by a bank. It is a peer to peer marketplace."

Manetta continued, "We are here because we wanted to become closer to the poker community. We wanted to learn what their problems are, especially in financing their gaming. We wanted to help players make payments faster. Say you are a casino and they can't travel with a bunch of cash with them we can help them transfer money from their country of origin instantly and walk out with your chips. It is a pretty simple process relying on vendors we have in each country."

Also, Manetta shared that businesses interested in implementing the simple Paxful API into their ecommerce or getting involved with Paxful for land-based solutions can visit the "Pay-With-Paxful" webpage.

Manetta is a world traveler who was originally from the mid-west United States. Due to his love of an online game, he met a good friend. His friendship developed, which i.e. day led to a journey halfway across the world to Australia which eventually led to him settling down the past few years in northern Europe.

He shared that, "I grew up in Iowa. Later, I visited Australia with plans to go on a three month holiday to spend time with a friend who I met online by playing Rainbow 6:3. By playing online over a long period of time, we became very good friends. I eventually wound up meeting a bunch of Estonians in Australia. I learned to speak Estonian from them just because there were so many and I thought the language sounded cool. I went to go visit them in their home country and wound up staying there. I now live in Helsinki and Tallinn for the past five years."

Like just about anyone that has visited or lived in northern Europe will share, Manetta is truly enjoying his experience stating that, "It is a pretty wonderful place, pretty safe, and a beautiful place to live with a lot of culture. It was something new, and because I work with tech start-ups it is a great place for me to be as everyone involved in start-ups there is very supportive. To me, when compared to other places the region's start-up community is very supportive and in general more uplifting. You help out someone and they help you. It always comes around and is a big circle of support. I fell in love with it and that's why I stayed in the north."

While Manetta hasn't played much poker before, this won't be the last time he is seen at the Cash Game Festival. He will be at the next live stop in Tallinn from Nov. 16-20 sharing that, "I will be in town for the next Cash Game Festival in Tallinn."