Archive for the 'Life' Category

College over - To Work or To Play?

Published
by
Adam
on June 2, 2008
in Life and Poker
. 0 Comments

As of last Friday, I’ve officially finished college for the year having handed in my final portfolio for one of my modules. This leaves me with a very important decision to make for Summer - Shall I spend the Summer months working, or playing? I went for an interview last week in Dublin with a prominent online entertainment company and if I get the go ahead for an internship, I should be moving up to Dublin which should be a great experience, both professionally and socially!

On the flipside, if I don’t get the job in Dublin, I can either plug away a few days a week in the Tower Hotel like I’ve been doing for the past 3 years, or I can kick the job to the curb and play poker online for the Summer! How’s that going, I hear you ask! Well I was forced to drop limits and have grinded my way up to 38 buyins at $20NL and will be moving up to $50NL when I either win another two buyins, or when I receive my next rakeback payment!

Now it’s certainly not possible to make a living playing $20NL, but the possibility begins to present itself at $50NL where 200BB pots are now worth $100. Win enough of those and I’ll not only ensure a nice monthly rakeback payment but also I’ll be well on my way to $100NL which is now my revised goal for the end of Summer.

Regarding how I feel my game is, I’ve subscribed to DeucesCracked for their training videos and have been very impressed and I’ve also recorded and published videos of my play for criticism from a “Small Stakes Study Group” that I’m a member of! So you can’t accuse me of not trying to improve my game! I’ve also stepped it up in terms of tables - I now have up to 8 on the go at once. The reason for the change is that I read a respected user on Boards.ie post that at these levels it’s all about getting yourself into as many situations and face as many awkward and difficult decisions as possible. While I’m not beating the games at the same rate I was when I was playing 4tables, I’m becoming more proficient at making correct decisions and extracting value from my hands which should stand to me when I move up the levels!

While it seems that I’m doing a lot to improve my game, a skeleton remains in my closet in the form of random tilting and spewing! I find myself calling people down light and stacking off preflop with marginal holdings. Stupid moves like this are very costly and are the number one reason why it’s taken me so long to beat this level! I hope to get a handle on it by time I move up, otherwise $50NL could prove to be an expensive (mis)adventure!

So, with all that said, I think I’m constantly improving my game and am capable of beating the games I play to make a relatively modest living out of it. If I get the job in Dublin then obviously it takes priority but I’d much rather grind the tables for 5 hours a day than continue working where I am now…

Poker Review: 13th - 19th Feb. A Rollercoaster

Published
by
Adam
on February 20, 2008
in Life and Poker
. 0 Comments

I must say that I’m adopting a very unorthodox method of reviewing my weekly sessions. Most peoples week starts on a Monday, or Sunday but I’m opting for Wednesday to be the beginning of my week for the purpose of these reviews? Why, I hear you ask. Well put simply, I moved over to a new skin last Wednesday, so decided that I may as well just start reviewing my sessions from then, instead of waiting for another few days :).

I started by lodging a $850 bankroll which I hoped would keep me out of trouble at $50NL. I had previously taken 4 and 5 buyin shots at $50NL and found it to be beatable but 5 buyins isn’t enough to sustain the negative variance in poker and despite running well for the first thousand or so hands each time, the doomswitch would soon be flicked and I’d find myself missing all my big draws, constantly getting outdrawn on and consequently found myself stacking off the rest of bankroll on 3-barrel 6 high bluffs! This time I swore it would be different!

The usual trend soon began to appear with me running well for the first few sessions (being up $83) before it all went wrong. I finished my first day on the new skin down a buyin. Day 2 started off as the first finished with me once again dropping a buyin on a KK vs AA hand. Maniac had the aces obviously :(. I dropped another buyin to him shortly after when I foolishly called his river overbet with TPTK. He had rivered a set :(. By the end of Day 2 I was down 3 and a half buyins, a small downswing some might say, but it wasn’t just a case of running bad - I was playing badly too. I was raising too lightly in middle position and found myself calling 3bets OOP with very vulnerable hands. I also found myself approaching the shortstacks in far too aggressive a manner. I set about tightening up in early and mid position and tackle the shortstacks in a more cautious but ultimately more effective way (I have to thank the 2+2 forums for a lot of the advice on that shortstackers).

So I began a process of rebuilding. I was very fortunate to hit a gutshot in the following hand to earn back a buyin.

Absolute Life Poker 0.25/0.50, hand converted by the iPoker Converter at Talking-Poker

saw flop | saw showdown

Button rakatam ($22.05)
SB GuardianSaint ($58.50)
BB PeppeT78 ($15.00)
UTG cesena ($22.80)
UTG+1 cannacaz ($12.90)
MP Tuomasso ($56.05)
CO-1 Hero ($65.55)
BB HUGOSPEWGO ($50.00)

Preflop: Hero is in the CO-1 with T 9
3 folds, Hero raises to 2.00, HUGOSPEWGO calls 1.50, 3 folds.

Flop (4.75) 2 K J
Hero bets 3.00, HUGOSPEWGO calls 3.00.

Turn (10.75) Q
Hero bets 7.00, HUGOSPEWGO calls 7.00.

River (24.75) A
Hero checks, HUGOSPEWGO moves all-in for 38.00, Hero calls 38.00

Hero shows T 9
HUGOSPEWGO shows K A

Hero wins 100.75 with A straight, Ace high.

I soon lost it though with Q8 on the button when I stacked off when my middle pair was no good against a turned house on a 55QK board :S. Horrible play! The next thousand or so hands were all steady going. I didn’t lose to much and constantly plugged away at the blinds while also picking up a few nice pots with some fortuitous flopped sets.

It wasn’t until today that I finally got back into the green, starting the day flopping a flush in the first hand I played on the button when I raised with 89c and the flop came J47c and he called my bets all the way with KJ with all the money going in when the K hit the river! I picked up another buyin when I hit bottom set with 33 and called the villains cbet on a rainbow flop. He hit his ace on the turn and stacked off with his A5!

So here are my stats for the end of the week:

Hands: 2539
VP$IP: 17.57%
PFR: 13.4%
AF: 2.91 (6.13/3.05/1.59)
Att. To Steal: 37.12%
W$WSF: 41.52%
Total Won/Lost: $103.37 (4.09 ptbb/100)
Cashback and Bonus: Approx $40

Net Profit/Loss: $143.37

poker.jpg

My Poker Challenge - €0 to €1k! - Weeks 2 and 3

Published
by
Adam
on August 22, 2007
in Life and Poker
. 0 Comments

Well I missed my usual date for reporting my progress last week because I was too busy getting my Leaving Certificate results and binge drinking for the entire day! For those that are interested, I got 365 points which is statistically an above average leaving cert but when I compare the points I got to the amount of effort I put in then I can safely say that my return on effort was exceptionally high! How does this affect my life? Well come October I’ll be studying Marketing in the local “university level” Institute of Technology for the next four years. The main advantage of this regarding my poker playing is that I’ll be living at home and will therefore still have access to the Internet and be able to play.

I’m currently running along very smoothly and I’m pleased to say that last week saw me make my first every final table in a MTT - a $1500 Value Guarantee Tournament - which I went on to win! I earned $300 for that which is a massive return considering the tournament cost $1 to enter, I didn’t need to rebuy and purchased my addon at the end of the rebuy period bringing my total investment to $2!

Going into the first tournament break, I was only slightly above the average chip amount but I was patient, played my cards and picked my spots and found myself to be one of the chipleaders going into the second break! It nearly all fell apart in the mid-late stage of the tournament when I found AA for the first time in the tournament and induced an all-in bet preflop from a villain who turned over KK and hit his King on the flop taking around 70% of my stack with it! I had, up to this point, been playing tight and picked up the blinds whenever I sensed weakness but now with the relatively short stack I found myself having to take risks and on several occasions found myself at the wrong side of 70-30 situations which I somehow wiggled my way out of! Once I built up my stack again and as play approached the bubble, I found myself being able to steal blinds at will and soar onto the final table with a healthy chip lead. I knocked out 6 (I think) of the final table to go heads-up against a relatively short stacked opponent. I soon became the shortstack as I ran into AK and AA in consecutive hands but recovered through aggressive play and finally knocked the villain out for my biggest poker win yet when my ATs topped his A9o!

At the end of the week I decided to revert back to cash play but played very poorly and was down $30 (~150 buyins) within an hour and concluded that I should stick to Sit N Go’s and MTTs if as I had found them to be both great value for money and great fun to play. I may opt to go back to cash table play in the future, in fact I may have to by necessity as Cash play is very popular in the card rooms here, but for now I feel that as long as I’m making money playing tournaments then I shouldn’t change a thing!

Today I played my first bit of poker since Friday. I opted for 2 $5 dollar 6-Max Sit N Go’s as I find that there are a lot of soft players who are willing to gamble at the early stages who make it much easier to reach the money. I don’t mind letting one gambler double-up at the expense of another in the early stages as I feel that I can play better poker than them in the long run and overcome their chip dominance and topple them when playing heads-up. I won both the Sit N Go’s, netting $21 from each! I had been having mixed success in the Sit N Go’s last week when I started playing them but I now believe that I have adapted my game to counter the trends and styles of play that I’m encountering on the tables which is ultimately turning me into a more profitable player!

Following my two Sit N Go victories, I decided to enter into the $1500 Value Guarantee Tournament on VCPoker which had a $3 buyin with unlimited rebuys within the first hour, an optional addon at the first break and a field of 80 players. The first few levels were very hectic as players were going all-in with almost ATC. I read that the logic behind this is that you are pumping the table full of chips which (as the supposedly better poker player) you intend on winning back after the rebuy period has lapsed. While I’m sure that this strategy does work from time to time, I believe that winning the chips from the rebuying players through tight play is a sounder and more profitable way of playing (well, certainly at this level it is). Once again I was playing tight poker and was picking my spots to steal the blinds. I was very happy that I brought the best hand to the showdown in 100% of my shown hands within the first two breaks. I was the chip leader going into the 3rd hour of play but suffered a few bad beats and made a few bad calls which probably affected my table image resulting in me being unable to steal as many blinds as I would have liked. I still controlled over 15% of the chips at the bubble and was placed 4th until I called an all-in bet by the short stack with my pocket tens only to have another shortstack reraise all-in with QJ. He hit his Queen on the flop and a forth club on the river gave him his flush.

This meant that I was in less than satisfactory shape going onto the final table. I was 7th in chips with 28,000 bu the blinds were 5k/10k and when play started at the final table I found myself UTG+1 meaning the blinds were going to nip me in the arse and decimate my remaining stack within 3 hands. I folded my first hand, a hand that resulted in a player being knocked out, but decided to push all-in with Ts7s UTG while I still had the ability to push people off hands. I figured that if I could pick up the blinds here, I would be able to survive another orbit, giving me a chance to pick up some playable hands or result in some of the other shortstacks being eliminated. Needless to say, my push was folded all the way round to the chip leader on the button who called with pocket kings. The flop gave him a set, the turn gave me a gutshot draw but the river was a blank, and so I finished up in 9th place for $45!

So overall it’s been a very successful fortnight for me. Unfortunately iPoker doesn’t provide any tournament summaries so it’s nigh on impossible for me to calculate how much I have won/lost using any method other than: adding my current NETeller balance (€344.05) and my current poker account balance (€27.03). When I do this, I get €371.08!. So after three weeks, I am over a third of the way to completing my goal and as college looms I’m starting to realise that the €1k could very well come in handy in the very near future!

My Poker Challenge - €0 to €1k! - Week 1

Published
by
Adam
on August 10, 2007
in Life and Poker
. 2 Comments

So one week has passed since I started my challenge of making zero money into one thousand and so far I’m exceeding my expectations, but unfortunately it isn’t my poker that’s being the shining light, instead it’s moreso my cunning use of bonuses which see’s me up €115.

My initial €8 ($10) bonus on VCPoker was quickly chewed up as I foolishly played where I am most comfortable, at the $20NL Ring tables. I could only play on one table at a time and had to sit each time with my entire bankroll in play. At this point I didn’t have Poker Tracker or Gametime+ running but I found that I didn’t need either to help me read my opponents and make moves which were working and after solid play for two hours I had more than doubled my money to €23 and could now afford to sit at two tables, once again without PT or GT+ running. Once I switched to multi-tabling however, my fortunes started to turn as I could no longer focus solely on the one table and couldn’t gain any insights into my opponents through observation.

I lost half my bankroll in a hand where I was trying to play the player, not the cards. A few hands prior to it, I looked down at AJs in mid position and made it $1 to play, all folded except for the button who made it $2.40. I thought about it and folded and then I told him what I folded and this is the key reason why I did what I did the next orbit when I looked down at KTo and raised once again to $1. Once again, all folded except for the button who once again made it $2.40, I realised that this was the exact same play as before and remembered that I had told him that I folded AJs so any reraise I put in would be indicative of me having a hand greater than that. I also considered that he was making a move, as he knew that he had previously knocked me off AJs with the same raise. I shoved and he called. The board came down Q84 J 4 which didn’t help me in the slightest and he turned over AKo to rake in a pretty substantially sized pot which included half my entire bankroll! He must have been bricking it when he saw the Queens and Jacks as he could have only made that call if he had put me on AJ or AQ. I felt hard done by, but in retrospect it was a very optimistic play that deserved to have me bust out!

With only a tiny amount of money to play with, I decided to look for other “no deposit needed” offers on other sites and accidentally came across the casino site, CasinoClassic which proudly advertised that it offers €500 to new members to play with for one hour and you get to keep anything that you win above that amount. It seemed too good to be true and in hindsight it was as I was required to deposit €20 to access the bonus that I had won after the hour trial (which was the maximum of €200), when I deposited the money I learned that I had to wager my bonus 30 times before I was able to withdraw anything and my favoured game, Blackjack, only counted for 10%, so I would have had to wager 300 times €200 (€60,000!) before any of my bonus money was unlocked! I decided instead to play European Roulette and wager 50% of my bankroll on Red and 50% on black. I was risking 100% of my money for a 87.5% chance of merely breaking even but by breaking even I would be unlocking a bonus ten times my initial deposit! After every few spins I’d check the banking window to see if I could withdraw and finally I saw that I was able to withdraw €120 of my bonus into the safety of my Neteller account. What I learned from my brief encounter with an online casino was that they are to kept away from. They lure you in with a big promotion and use the small print as an excuse to have you keep playing for your money. They also don’t have an option to let you know how much you’ve wagered which can only spell trouble for those who are immersed in their games!

So after a bit of luck, my bankroll was back up to €100 (I’m subtracting the €20 of my own money that I had to deposit to unlock the bonus). I then set about joining as many other poker sites that I could in order to avail of bonuses and exclusive freerolls and started playing in $5 “6 Max” Sit N Go’s on iPoker with a great deal of success. I was looking set to cash in on my third consecutive game when I pushed all-in on the bubble with JJ and the villain (who I had covered slightly) called with J5o. I was a 95% favourite to win the hand, he needed twin fives to win and of course he hit them both on the flop, leaving me drawing to a one outer which never hit. I was left with 350 chips with the blinds at 150/300, so in the next hand, I pushed from the SB with my remaining 200 with K7o and was called by the Button who turned over K8o to knock me out in third spot and out of the money.

After one week then, my bankroll is now at €115.93 with an additional $7 to be unlocked on Titan Poker if I start earning points. Overall it’s all looking pretty rosy, not bad for a shoddy weeks work :).

Leaving Cert 2007 - German

Published
by
Adam
on June 15, 2007
in Exam Diary, Life and School
. 3 Comments

Never in two years of Leaving Cert German had I contemplated doing Ordinary Level. But this morning I learned that several of my friends were dropping down to Ordinary level and these were people that did better than me in their mocks. Suddenly, doubts were cast in my mind but I knew that I couldn’t even contemplate dropping - I needed to pass German to get into university, but without the points of honours I wouldn’t have enough points to get a university course - so honours it would have to be!

The first of the two comprehensions was quite difficult. It was about a woman who loved the language of music. I spent close to an hour trying to decipher the meaning of the story. I was at a particular disadvantage having not looked at music vocabulary since the Junior Cert! I was only able to manipulate the text in a small number of places so I’m certainly not entitled to full marks there. The second text was much easier and I certainly made up for my lack of manipulation in the first text here as I was able to substitute words in many areas as I was well prepared in the topic.

My Ausserung Zum Thema was a hastily put together 86 word piece which is slightly shorter than the recommended amount but I was under a pit of time pressure to move on. The letter was the final task on the paper. I was asked to respond to my German penpal who was telling me all about their gap year in Africa, their class project, their “Abi Ball” and Reality TV. I enjoyed writing it and it came in at about 200 words in length although I didn’t really include any phrases that implied fluency but I’m hopeful of a good honours mark on the paper!

After a quick 5 minute break, we were subjected to the aural exam. It was generally quite easy , at times it was unbelievably easy, but there were a few difficult parts I found to Part 4 - The News Bulletins - one being a UN announcement which I now know was to do with dolphins but I wrote down that it was the “Year of the Fisherman”. Also as I’ve been doing since 5th year, I answered the only part of the exam that’s meant to be in German in English before realising my mistake upon the second listening!

Before the exams started, I was openly dismissive about being able to get my first choice in college, but now, with only one exam left, I’m starting to feel as if I may just be in with a decent shout should the points happen to drop. My remaining exam is Economics - my strongest subject. I hope to spend the next few days putting in the work required for an A1. If I manage that then who knows how my college offers will pan out…

Leaving Cert 2007 - History

Published
by
Adam
on June 13, 2007
in Exam Diary, Life and School
. 10 Comments

Since last Thursday, the only thing I’ve been looking at is the blue examination papers and I was getting a bit bored of them! So I was pleased today to be sitting a higher level exam in the form of History. I said yesterday that it’s a course so vast that all you can do is pray that what topics you’ve studied come up in some shape or form on the exam! Of course you could spend the time praying doing some actual study instead. I like my way better though for today when I opened the paper I saw questions on everything I had studied… lucky me :)

The documents question was based on the GAA and while I didn’t do much study on it, the questions were nice and easy and the 40 mark essay was on a nice and broad topic (how did the GAA overcome the difficulties it faced). I just waffled on for a page and a bit about how they popularised the sports and tackled the Fenian influence in the organisation. Hopefully I’ll get close to full marks for the section!

Section Two was all about Irish History which is by far my worst area because of the many similar dates that you’re required to remember and despite my last minute efforts to imprint important dates into my brain, I forgot them all when I went to answer the question on Anglo-Irish relations following the foundation of the Free State. All I could do was include rough dates but I reckon the standard of my two and half page answer was around the C level.

I must say that I loved the 2 questions I did on European History. The Dictatorship and Democracy question I did saw me explain the main characteristics of Nazi Germany prior to WWII. I was able to rant and rave about education, the economy, propaganda, religion and the persecution of the Jews for a good while and I reckon the overall answer was worthy of maybe 75/100 marks, once again dropping marks for being unable to pinpoint certain dates! The other question wasn’t on The role of women as I had hoped… instead it was on the role of women and the changes in family and marriage. I was spoilt for choice! I was able bang off facts and figures relating to 40 years of change and was able to get in 8 decently sized paragraphs all filled with scrumptuous relavent information. I’d be disappointed if I don’t get 90/100 for it :)

Overall I reckon it went very well and am hoping for a low B or a high C. I was very nervous about it this morning but once I started writing there was no looking back and I left the exam hall after time was up today feeling as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders! I know many have finished their exams today, but I still have two left - German and Economics. Strangely enough I can’t wait for them!

Leaving Cert 2007 - Biology

Published
by
Adam
on June 12, 2007
in Exam Diary, Life and School
. 1 Comment

“Can I really do Higher Level?” I was saying to myself last night. I was looking at my pre paper - 32% - I didn’t study then so you’d think that it would be easy enough for me to do honours and pass but on the other hand, I hadn’t really done much work on Biology since the pre’s and I felt that my passing would have been reliant on me getting both easy questions and a sympathetic corrector!

I didn’t feel like riding my luck though and I decided to be happy with the 35-40 points I could get in Ordinary biology rather than risk failing honours for a small chance of me getting 40-50 points. So this morning when the supervisor was handing out the papers I requested to change down to pass.

I opened the paper and it did look fairly daunting but thankfully I had checked out a marking scheme the night before and realised that the marks were “top-heavy” meaning that the majority of marks were going for the initial answers and a minority of marks go for further points that you add (eg: 10 marks for first point, 5 for second, 3 for third and 2 for forth). This suited me down to the ground as Honours biology requires that you know the course in great detail whereas Ordinary allows you to get marks without this indepth knowledge. However, knowing one or two topics in great detail doesn’t get rewarded in Ordinary because of the distribution of the marks - you’re far better knowing a bit about everything than everything about a bit!

There were certainly questions that I choked on and had to take wild guesses at but I am quite confident of a good result as I did attempt every question with “educated” guesses. I’m not happy that I couldn’t remember anything about the Protein test though which formed a question on Section 2 although I did draw a nice diagram on Rhizopus which I had just revised before going into the exam :)

I left after 2 hours and was one of the last pass guys to leave, so I’m quite confident of a high C in it which mightn’t sound like much but by my logic it’s better than failing at honours level!

Tomorrow is History, a subject with a course so vast that you can only hope that something you study comes up! So as long as the GAA, De Valera in Power, theNazi state and The Role of Post War Women comes up then I’ll be in great shape. If only….

Leaving Cert 2007 - Maths Paper II (OL)

Published
by
Adam
on June 11, 2007
in Exam Diary, Life and School
. 3 Comments

I had intended on doing a lot of study for this… I really did. But then I got the bright idea to go on a short cycle on Saturday which quickly turned into a 30 mile endurance test! I slept for about 15 hours and had no energy to study yesterday! So I walked into the exam hall today having only revised 2 chapters - Area and Volume and Linear Programming - and hoping that the Probability and Statistics questions would be kind to me!

I turned over the paper at 9:30 this morning and flicked straight to the Linear Programming question - my strongest question - and was immediately faced with a question that was phrased differently to those of previous years and I really choked on the question trying to figure it out for around half an hour before conceding and flicking back to the other questions in the paper.

I flew through the Area and Volume question and thankfully the probability question was simple and I reckon I got 50/50 in those two questions. I dropped a few marks in the Statistics question by mistaking the ‘median’ for the mean but I should have got around 40/50. I then attempted the rest of the paper, trying to gain as many attempt marks as possible although there were several parts to the Trigonometry and Geometry questions that I couldn’t even attempt as I didn’t know where to start!

With the rest of the paper attempted, I went back to the Linear Programming question to see if I could make heads or tails of it. I attempted it in a few different ways but just gave up - my diagram was incomplete and incorrect. I was frustrated with the question because it’s usually my “banker” question. With 3 minutes left I attempted a part C to the Further Sequences and Series question which surprisingly had a Compound Interest slant to it!

I left the exam hall a few minutes late and feeling a bit hard done by. I feel as if the phrasing of the question was more cryptic than anything else. I know that equations in disguise are a part of maths but even Sherlock Holmes would have had great difficulty in seeing through this particular guise…

Leaving Cert 2007 - Irish Paper II (OL)

Published
by
Adam
on June 8, 2007
in Exam Diary, Life and School
. 8 Comments

For along time I wondered what the point was in studying for Irish paper II. It’s worth a mere 17% and the work that you must put in order to obtain that 17% is quite heavy! I just didn’t consider it worth my time studying when all I need is a pass in OL as it will be the subject that I’ll be discounting at the end of the Leaving Cert. Nevertheless, despite my views on this section of the exam, I put in about an hour of study last night absorbing all the information I could on “Clare sa Spéir”, “An Cearrbhach Mac Caba” and the poem “An Gealt”.

I opened the paper to see one of my worst fears… Clare sa Speir and An Cearrbhach Mac Caba were merged into the one question which meant that I had to do a question on “An Bhean Og” blindly. Thankfully if you’re ever going to do a question blindly, Irish paper II is where you want it to be with very few marks going for the moderately long answers that are expected of you. I thought that I managed to handle myself relatively well although I was annoyed that I was forgetting some shockingly simple words like “funny” but I handled that by saying “Bhí mé ag gáire nuair a….”.

So of the 17% that’s going for this OL paper, I reckon I’ll be doing well to get 11% which will hopefully supplement the marks I got in my oral, the aural, and paper 1. I have the weekend to myself now and I’ll spending that time studying Maths, Maths and more maths. And History and Biology!

Leaving Cert 2007 - Maths and Irish Papers 1

Published
by
Adam
on June 7, 2007
in Exam Diary, Life and School
. 5 Comments

After being relatively pleased with my English exam, my nerves were settled for yet another full day of exams. The night before saw some last minute preparation for the subjects with a focus on Maths as it’s my subject of the two and I’ve always been told that “you have to work hard to fail Irish”.

Maths paper one (OL) was our first exam of the day and when I turned over the paper I was relieved to see an easy Arithmetic question, its most taxing task was having to calculate the hours worked by a worker in a day. I think I spent more time being jealous over the amount of money he earned than I spent actually doing the question! There were surprisingly easy parts to some of the questions and nothing was really too complicated. A nice paper overall, I just hope Paper II will be as accessible.

Irish paper one (OL) was a a very nice paper. For the first time in a long time in a paper, I understood the comprehensions which always helps when you’re answering 10 questions on them each worth 4%! The essay titles were all nice and liberal, I chose to write about Saturday nights being my favourite night and my father winning the lottery. I managed to reach the recommended word count on each and although my standard of Irish is pretty bad in parts, I’m hopeful that I picked up marks worthy of a good C1 in the paper!

The aural directly followed the Irish paper (well, after a 1 hour lay about in the Sun) and it wasn’t too bad. The supervisor commented on there being a few difficult parts for Ordinary Level and I would have to agree. There was one question in particular that I was totally lost for, ‘Comhra Dó”. I was waiting to hear the title of a book for the 2nd question and suddenly realised that the conversation had moved onto the 4th question! Apart from that, I can’t really complain about it and I’m glad that I will never have to listen to that deplorable Ulster accent EVER again… unless I flick over to Ros na Rún that is!

It’s paper two tomorrow, the prose and poetry paper, which is worth a mere 17% of the overall exam. I’m not going to cry myself to sleep over my lack of preparation and will probably just look at “An Gealt” which is the most tipped of poems to be on the paper!