The final weekend of May featured the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker Main Event. There were 580 entrants in the high-stakes version, which came with a $10,000 buy-in, and Full Tilt Poker pro Viktor Isildur1 Blom came away with the title and $1 million. Getting fifth in the tournament for a not-so-paltry $313,000 was London’s Sergio Aido (pictured), better known on PocketFives as zcedrick.

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“It was a really bad SCOOP for me, but in the last bullet I fired, I managed to fix that,” Aido told PocketFives in an exclusive interview. “I am happy because it is the best result of my career, but I am only thinking about improving my game now.”

He plays cash games and tournaments both live and online and explained that he suffers from a “lack of adaptation.” His cash game endeavors consist of NL400 to NL2000 and he also plays games on the EPT circuit. Aido remarked, “I recently played the last Big Game in Barcelona and was the big winner at the end of the night.”

We’re talking about the SCOOP Main Event, so let’s get back to that. Aido entered the final table in third place, but said that he had MunchenHBon his left: “He was 3betting me around 80% of the time and although I tightened up, there were disgusting spots for ICM because of the short stacks.” MunchenHB landed in fourth place for $446,000. Five members of the top 100 in the PocketFives Rankings cracked the top 40.

As far as Blom (pictured) goes, Aido evaluated, “I think he played well and didn’t get mad post-flop. I didn’t have much action with him and he even gave me three walks in the small blind. I would be lying if I told you that I didn’t prefer to cold-call him instead of 3bet when I was out of position. He doesn’t like to fold to 3bets and is a master at putting pressure on you. So yes, I tried to respect him more than the others.”

He is headed out to Las Vegas, where he’ll likely run into Blom, on June 24. There, you can find him in various $1,000 to $5,000 buy-in World Series of Poker tournaments as well as the Main Event, which begins on July 6. He might tick up his live play in general with the $313,000 cash infusion.

In late 2012, Aido took down the WPT National Series in Barcelona for $115,000 and bagged a victory in March of this year in an event during the UKIPT’s stop in London for $217,000. On his home country of Spain, Aido evaluated, “In Spain, poker regulations have killed the game. You can only play with people from your country and later you must pay abusive taxes. So, I moved to London to play. I am living with three other grinders and we are very happy with it.”

He got started in poker four years ago playing freerolls. He explained, “Then, I moved for one year to Germany in order to study on a scholarship and that was where I started playing NL25 on Full Tilt. I started playing professionally last summer. Almost everything I know is self-taughtand comes from playing and discussing hands with friends. This motivates me because I still have much to learn by studying and working with my mates at the office.”

Speaking of the office, Aido has nearly $900,000 in tracked online poker MTT scores in his PocketFives profile, the vast majority of which have come on PokerStars. He is ranked #27 in the United Kingdom and #6 in London. The Hendon Mob has credited him with nearly $500,000 in live scores and he is #143 on the 2013 money list.

We’ll go ahead and plug that you can follow him on Twitter under the handle @petgaming. Congrats to all PocketFivers who cashed during the recent SCOOP series.

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