Brag, beat and a load of bollocks

So I've finally decided to stop being lazy. Luckily for my loyal readers my scheduled date for tonight (brag) has been postponed until next week (beat) so you are getting a long awaited update.

I've had a lot going on in my life over the last couple of months workwise which has forced me to regretably abandon poker and the blogging world for some time yet again. Fortunately exams are now over until next summer allowing me some time to reflect and consolidate about where I am with my life right now and where I want to be.

I started this job in January in such a positive manner. It took a fair amount of work to get through the various application stages and I accepted without a second thought. Yet the reality is that so many people were more deserving and probably wanted the job more than me at the time. The sad fact is that my ability to 'play the game' and to say exactly what people wanted to hear during interviews meant I was able to bag myself a job on one of the most highly sought after graduate schemes in the country without really breaking sweat. Now part of me is wondering why I bothered and I'm struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I will plough on though and as The Office once wisely taught me; 'sometimes it's better to be moving up on a different ladder to the one you want to end up on'. For now I'm just going to try and be a bit more motivated and work harder to try and spark an interest.

I shouldn't complain really. Edinburgh was once again amazing and I can't wait to go back for the summer of 2010. The truth is I slacked off badly. I drank excessively, gambled ridiculously and failed to do any work for weeks on end. Basically I treated it as a holiday. Luckily when it came down to it the work was fairly simple and I think I have passed based on the week of work I did at the end. But this isn't what these exams are designed for. They aren't like uni exams where you can cram and cram only to forget everything during the next blur of a week.

After the exams had finished I went on what was possibly the biggest bender of my life, spending a ridiculous amounts of Scottish pounds over a period of 5 days and nights. Most of it is a blur and the parts I do remember I wish I didn't. This then continued on my arrival back to Nottingham and after a horrific early morning flight I was hard at it again by noon on the day of my return at Nottingham races. I was joined by Keysie and my old schoolfriend Jim who proceeded to rattle off hilarious stories one after the other throughout the course of the day. Most involved gamblers or prositutes or both, but the final story of the night certainly topped the absolute lot. The story went as follows:

"My mate was in a hotel in London one night and he heard two people shagging in the next room. After it stopped he went out into the corridor only to see the two culprits leaving together. You'll never guess who it was..."

Fairly standard stuff so far. Given the lack of clues to go on we both passed and braced ourselves for his forthcoming revelation;

"So anyway, walking down the corridor together were Phil Mickelson and Andrew Castle".

"I'm sorry did you say Phil Mickelson, as in one of the world's leading golfers, and Andrew Castle, the BBC tennis commentator?"

"Yeah mate, that's what happened apparently"

I swear to god I've never laughed so hard in my life. For about 5 minutes none of us could speak through the laughter. If I could pick two people in the world less likely to be having sex in a London hotel with each other then it would probably be that combination of two people. Apparently the witness to this astonishing incident is adamant this is the truth, tells the story completely straight faced and will not back down at all. I guess it must be true then. I'll leave you to decide.

After a day of sleeping the Durham crew rolled in on Friday for the DTD weekend and merryments. Some pints and Lightning Seeds in Riley's was the pre cursor for a fleeting visit back to the flat for a shower and vodka and then a cab to Revolution for some sambuca and Dom Perignon. Sadly by 1.30am, after some impressive dancing skillz, the night was over and a paraletic Keys was escorted back to Apartment 2 where I set about playing with bleach and sharing a bed with a fully clothed pgchips. At 7am the lad went on a rampage of the flat waking everyone up and generally being annoying to the point where I was close to throwing punches. It was certainly not the ideal preparation for the 2pm tournament.

As it was I made day 2 along with 45 other players from the 280 runners so clearly this was perfect preparation. With 36 left and just under 20bb's I ran pocket 8's from the small blind into the button raiser's QQ. Somewhat of a cooler most would say. Still I'm guessing half of the table probably probably had disapproving words after I left unable to believe that some guy had just shipped in a 50k stack with a pair of 8's. But I didn't hang around and left them to wait for QQ+ and to fight it out for 9th place between them. Quite a shocking statistic that none of my table from the start of day 2 ultimately finalled which gives you an indication of how confident I was in going very deep if I could have got going at all on day 2. Still a great value tournament and I'll be back until I win it again.

That's me done for now anyway...will be back soon if you're unlucky.

An update from carling central...

We went to the English Poker Open launch party last night. I'm not playing myself but Keys very kindly allowed me to escort him as his chosen guest for the evening. It should be said that any of Nottingham's finest tramps could have probably waltzed in and helped themselves to the free alcohol and Doyle Brunson books so I didn't feel too honoured once we arrived. Sadly we were moments too late for the embarassing Tony Blair lookalike speech which by all accounts went down about as well as my lunch did today after all that wine. We stayed for not much longer than an hour since Keys wasn't drinking and the free alcohol was withdrawn after I'd managed only 5 glasses. A few big names lingered; Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson were there for about 30 minutes, James Akenhead was in attendance and Liv Boeree looked absoloutely stunning. It's probably a good thing we did leave when we did, since a few more glasses of wine might have had me giving in to her constant sexual advances.

I am, however, playing the £500 side event tomorrow which is my first live tourn for ages. I was too lazy to make the 2 mile trip to DTD for the monthly £300 this month and although I had a wander down for the £150 on the Sunday I ended up just watching Keys ship the £300 instead. That lad has won over £100k with me railing; I'll be charging a 5% railing fee in future events I think. I can't imagine this £500 will get too many runners since it's a weekday and a one day event and also the structure is a bit turd. However I love a good crapshoot, especially an expensive one, so I fully expect to sh1p having nutured 15 bb's all the way through to heads up.

Anyway it's nice to be back blogging again after a lengthy spell on the sidelines. The fact of the matter is that not much had been going on worthy of posting, and thoughts had crossed my mind of just putting up one final goodbye and calling it a day. A video of a drunk me approaching Phil Hellmuth was suggested as a glorious finale, but my loyal 3 readers were nearly in tears at the thought of this blog ending so here we are, still going after 3 years. I've been playing a bit online in the last month but have continued to have no real success and I'm finding that I'm rarely in the right mindset after a day in the office, and would rather just crash in front of the TV or play on the PS3. I've made bad plays at crucial times which I wasn't making when I was playing a bunch last year without the distraction of being tired from a day at work. I know I'm nearly there, since I'm building a stack in a lot of the tournaments I'm playing but then blowing up because of fatigue and lack of practice. I also realised I was exiting every tourn I played on a bluff or a so called 'cooler', without actually thinking for a moment that it probably wasn't a cooler and maybe wasn't 'standard' as I kept insisting.

That said, I won't be playing poker for a while after tomorrow. It's time for my second set of exams which means 6 weeks away in Edinburgh with no internet and plenty of studying. I'm heading up a little early to try and catch the end of Edinburgh Uni freshers week and check out some young Scottish girls with my flatmate up there. I'm trying not to be complacent but rumours are that these exams are considerably easier than the last set and I do plan on enjoying myself a lot over the first few weeks before knuckling down a couple of weeks before the exams. Work has been generally going well, except for the day after the England-Croatia match when I turned up reeking of booze having been out celebrating till the early hours. I have no idea how I made it in by 9am, although I then spent the entire day browsing the internet and had to do twice the amount of work the following day to make up for it.

Good luck to Keys in the EPO, good luck to Nathan in the WCOOP Omaha and good luck to me in the £500 tomorrow.

Well...you've gotta enjoy yourself.

It was a weekend of epic proportions.

It all started on Friday evening. I knew Bowburn was heading up with a friend so naturally assumed that he would be driving us to DTD each day and home again after we won the lot. However imagine my surprise when the lad pulls up in the passenger seat of a Ferrari. My eyes lit up. Fuck the Ferrari, that was irrelevant. Now he wasn't driving I had visions of a drinking companion at DTD for the weekend! Off we trotted immediately to the club for the £10 rebuy satellite with 5 £300 seats guarenteed. I didn't really know how much ammunition I'd need so opted for £200 in salmons since you've gotta give yourself a bit of breathing space for rebuys in this sort of tournament imo. I actually only needed £40 to end the rebuy period atop the field of 60 players with a monumental 26k in chips from 2k starting. The blinds were only 100/200 so that was good going, almost as impressive as managing to be out 30 mins later. Its hard to remember specifics when you play every single hand for an hour and a half but one springs to mind. At 50/100 UTG min raises to 200, I make it 700 blind in MP and get two callers. Flop K83, I bet 1600 after it is checked to me and get called by the UTG player. Turn J check check. River 3. He checks, I look at my hand for the first time and inexplicably see 43 suited for trips and struggle to bet through laughter. Unfortunately my opponent folds. After I busted I saw away a few beers, dumped off some at PLO cash and headed home dead to the world at 1am. Dickie stormed in at 4am having bubbled. What a wally, 7 hours for nothing.

I knew Saturday was going to be a great day. As we left the flat in the morning a fine site awaited us downstairs, that of my favourite Maccy D's girl. But this was no normal working day. It looked at though she had decided to spend her day off collecting money for charity outside McDonalds, and due to the good weather was dressed for the occasion in a fantastic pair of short shorts and a skimpy top. I rushed back inside for a cold shower and to calm down before regaining my composure ready for the day of poker ahead. It must be said that its a fantastic comeback from her, she's responded well after it seemed Polish chip shop girl had edged ahead. I can only think she reads this blog and, having seen I might be straying, bounced back with a superb counter punch, far superior to that of a free fishcake. It's still a 50:50 as to who is the girl for me...

Anyway onto the £300 we waltzed. DTD's random table draw system managed to put me and Bowburn next to each other in a 320 player field which is laughable, but we both just agreed to play our normal games, knowing we were neither going to softplay each other or go after each other. Obviously 4th hand in I took 1k of his 10k starting stack...ship. After that I played for 6 hours, never got above my starting stack again and generally grinded with no cards before succombing when I flopped top pair from the blinds and check raised allin against a straight flush draw which connected. It was a far cry from June's tournament and a pretty unenjoyable day upto that point.

The bar then prospered. Rumours of DTD closing down were a thing of the past as we set about ploughing money into the place, destroying the beers for the next 5 hours. I have no memory of how we got home but I felt great the next day and apparently didn't do anything too bad at DTD except for knocking over a few chairs towards the end of the night. Bowburn is one of those worrying sorts who seems to remember stuff the next day, wonder what it's like, mbn I guess. Anyway the £150 on Sunday went about as well as the £300 for me. Although I got upto 10k early from my 6k starting stack I couldn't get going and it was just one of those days where no good situations seem to crop up. I didn't mind, since Dickie did really well to come 6th, and I had some of him so managed to make back most of the money I'd spent over the course of the weekend. It really was a lot of fun in DTD and I can't wait to go back for the next one, although I think I'll miss the August one if i've got my dates right, so that may be September.

On Tuesday night we went to the cinema and saw 'The Hangover'. What a hilarious film and definitely the best use of the word boom I've ever heard at one stage. Go and see it if you haven't already. Dickie departed early on Wednesday and I was left to resume my usual life of work, poker and dreaming of girls in fast food establishments.

So lets see how my mini goals from last week went.

- Win DTD deepstack - No
- Have breakfast in the flat everyday before work - 0 times
- Go to the gym 3 times minimum - 0 times
- Eat 5 portions of fruit/veg a day - not bad on this one, at least 3 everyday I'd say
- Ask McDonalds girl for phone number (although as a side note I went to the chip shop last night and there's a cracking Polish girl in there who couldn't get enough of me, so there could be a change of plan here, i'll keep you updated as this is a very important decision and could influence the rest of my life) - Not yet, undecided who I prefer. I also think this joke may have run its course now. I will be on the lookout for someone else to start stalking.
- Mop the kitchen floor - No

Well that sure went well. Might as well just set the same ones this week and see how we get on, should be a bit better given I don't have Dickie around to lead me astray. Bye for now.

I am American...apparently

I was perusing the Hendon Mob website, as you do, and stumbled across an odd looking set of tournament results. It's not often you see an American plying their trade on the British poker scene, usually all the results are dominated by an array of the British nations with the odd European thrown in for good measure. So imagine my surprise when I saw the stars and stripes sitting flying high on top of 26 English flags for a recent British event, and then imagine my double take when all was revealed.

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.php?a=r&n=35016

Seriously FML.

Still, MBN to win £28k. Apparently. Since they don't take into account deals I've been credited with all sorts of winnings I didn't have, all of which means I will soon have caught, and overtaken, Keysie Boy in our race to career prize money of £1 million.

I can reveal to the world the mystery poker superstar staying at my flat for the DTD deepstack this weekend is none other than Mr Phil Ivey. I really do hope that the guy who delivered the pizza's from Dominoes last time 'Mr Ivey' stayed over was a poker fan otherwise it was a joke wasted. One thing is for sure, it was a wasted journey for the poor bastard from Dominoes, although to be fair he did manage to get spectacularly lost making the 200m drive up the road and round the corner. It's amazing how funny a pizza box with 'Mr Phil Ivey' written on the side of it and then your own address can cause so much hilarity. Although he may not be the real Ivey, we will still be heading down to DTD with a good shot at shippage so let's hope for some run good.

Meanwhile I've gone on a strict diet and exercise regime in order to improve my fitness and build up some muscle in my upper body. Of course it hasn't actually started yet but i've been thinking about it all week and making preparations by taking a look at what I should be eating, and then just eating the things I normally eat anyway. Next week I will start, and I am quite motivated to do this for now, but we shall see how long it lasts. To put it simply I just don't think i eat enough at the moment, particularly in terms of getting enough of the right things within my diet. Firstly I've got to stop skipping breakfast or just picking up some fruit on the way to work. This might mean getting up a bit earlier, but I don't exactly have to get up late anyway so shouldn't be too much of a problem.

My aims for the next week:

- Win DTD deepstack
- Have breakfast in the flat everyday before work
- Go to the gym 3 times minimum
- Eat 5 portions of fruit/veg a day
- Ask McDonalds girl for phone number (although as a side note I went to the chip shop last night and there's a cracking Polish girl in there who couldn't get enough of me, so there could be a change of plan here, i'll keep you updated as this is a very important decision and could influence the rest of my life)
- Mop the kitchen floor

Right. I'll let you know how it goes next week. Cheerio.

Die ipoker

Feel like shit right now. Grinded all weekend for no reward and then finally got a run going in the iPoker Sunday biggy getting an early chip lead and maintaining it for the next 3 hours or so before getting shitted on. Final hurrah after a series of unamusing hands came with a reship of my 17 bb's with KQ over a button raise only to be called by 76hh for half a guys stack. Q52 flop, work the rest out. Pathetic $500 for my efforts to break even for the weekend.

tc1805, whoever you are, I'm am coming round to your house and pissing in your face and shitting on your wife. Next time you decide to raise 76 suited and someone shoves over the top maybe you will stop and think about the consequences. You are a clueless moron.

I don't feel like I played very well for most of the weekend but I was on the ball in this. Don't normally play tourns on there but Stars was killing me so I played a $40 satellite and won my seat and gave it a go. To be honest I don't normally play on ipoker fullstop but I put $1k on there to learn how to multi table cash games a few months back and pretty much left in untouched. After the week I've had I don't feel like playing tournaments so maybe I will give that a go on some evenings this week. In all reality I will just watch TV and laze around.

So fucking irritable right now. Also boiling hot, just can't get it to go cool in this flat. Everything is pissing me off right now. Poker, work, the weather, Bowburn....just everything. Getting in the right frame of mind could be the first step to any success I'm hoping will come so, with the DTD monthly next Saturday, this week will all about getting my mindset ready for long poker sessions again. Just living well, eating healthy meals, going to the gym, getting plenty of sleep. It's all easy adjustments I need to make if I want to reverse my fortunes. A positive mind will bring positive results.

For the first time in a long time tilt nearly led me to high stakes cash games. That is a worrying sign that things need to change. It was only a micro second lapse but that $500 was written off as lost money before I came to my senses quickly. Literally as soon as I'd said I was gonna go play 5/10 I changed my mind. But the fact that even for a second I wanted to means that next time it could happen and so I need to work on my mental attitude. The moment that summed it up was just as I busted the Sunday warmup getting my 25k stack in preflop at 250/500 with T8dd. It didn't hold against QQ sadly and the little box popped up, 'you finished in xxxxth position'. Yeah fuck off, let me exit and uninstall Stars for the 147th time. But before I could do it I got a second popup 'Congratulations sm1le, you have reached Silverstar status!'. Way to knock me when I'm down Lee Jones. Does he even work there anymore actually? Oh well...die John Duthie and Andre Akkari instead if he doesn't

What a waste of a weekend. And a waste of a blog post. I hate bad beat rants. Sorry

I need to find my bracelet...

You hear the odd story of players selling WSOP bracelets, in fact I heard of one recently going on ebay for a few thousand dollars. I'm not sure why someone would want to buy a bracelet off the internet given that I have heard on the grapevine they are pretty tacky, and it's a well known fact that anyone wearing one in a poker tournament is a grade a knob. I sat with a player in a Venetian $500 deepstack event who made it plainly obvious from the outset that the piece of crap on his wrist was a WSOP bracelet that he had no doubt luckboxed back before the poker boom when you were virtually at the final table before the tournament started. Anyway it just made me lose respect for him instantly, and consequently I tried harder to take chips off him, succeeding in my aim. It was especially embarrassing because of the low buyin and makes you wonder how many former bracelet winners are penniless these days.

Anyway I am digressing. Somewhere in my parents house lies an equally tacky, yet prestigious, piece of jewellery and I need to find it urgently. Back in the summer of 2007 I won one of the finest prizes in UK poker at the inaugural Mitchell Street Masters, topping a high quality field to take home event 2, the £1000* PLH. This year sees the second installment and I plan on becoming the first multiple bracelet winner. In fact here's a picture of the glorious moment, in what seems, and looks from the photo, years ago. Queens heads up to win as well pretty much sums up my life. Obviously as soon as the photo was taken the bracelet was frantically removed before my wrist turned green and has been hidden away somewhere at home. But I've decided to risk the possible ramifications of wearing cheap jewellery and dig it out from it's hiding place. No doubt my opponents will be intimidated as well as perhaps thinking I'm a bit of a knob but so be it. I must say it is particularly impressive that Bowburn has moved to Norwich and still lives in a street called Mitchell Street lol...but laughing aside it should be quality. (* £=p)

I got my desk setup on Saturday during the day and immmediately benefited from the improvement in surroundings by playing really well in some evening tournaments with Nathan playing on his laptop alongside me as the cans began to slip. Made a final table in a small $20 tournament but busted 4th or 5th as the cans kept luring me into hero bluffs and calls without my control. A completely reckless trip into town followed and I consequently had the worst hangover of my life on the Sunday, puking up well into double figures. Quite remarkable considering I must have been blind drunk hundreds of times in the last 4 years but I think we can put it down to the array of shots in Revolution which I distinctly remember gagging just at the smell off. The night will have to be repeated at some point anyway just for comedy value.

Following the WSOP online is something I've done every year since I got into poker. Unlike some people I know, I can read about, and watch, poker all the time without getting bored. This year has been no different and I have been following the action every day reading all updates. I have decided that I am going next year, regardless. Poker will likely always be a hobby to me, I have accepted that, purely because I don't think I could hack it mentally fulltime rather than not being able to make enough money. As I get older opportunities will diminish, my commitments will go up, and ultimately if I want to do it then it will have to be soon. So I just wanna take a shot, and if it doesn't work out then so be it. Just take like $20k out there and play a load of 1500's and other events for a few weeks. I know how down people can get if it starts going badly out there, and that is the main danger I suppose. But as I read about it I just wanna be there, in the action, feeling the excitement and adrenaline that goes with being deep in a tournament. So many young guys must go every year with less money and less chance of success, but occasionally they get lucky. Jeff Madsen had nothing. A week later he had 2 bracelets and the player of the series award. Just one go...that is all I want. I know I am good enough, it would just be a case of getting lucky.

I've not got much planned in the immediate future. I'll be playing the DTD deepstack just down the road on the first weekend of July so if anyone wants to come up/down for that my flat doesn't serve as a bad hotel. Already got one mystery poker superstar staying over for the weekend so the more the merrier. They have obv the £300 2 dayer as well as a £150 on the Sunday and copious amounts of cash games if that's your tipple. I also guess I should play some online but there's so many distractions. In a 50:50 between the Stars Daily 80k and Celebrity Masterchef there was only one winner tonight and that's really quite a sad fact. I'm starting to think that with time constraints cash games might be worth a look so maybe I will get on that. What will likely happen is I will just blog the same boring stuff next week having failed to put any hours in but welcome to my life of routine, I guess its not so bad. Now, i better get on the case for that bracelet...

Edit: Just in case you were wondering from my last post; I can confirm I am not gay. Nathan came to stay for the weekend and not once did I feel any more attracted to him than normal. Also, not once did I feel the need to lick his face. This is a huge relief and a weight off my mind.

This could go either way....and it has.

I'm still feeling a bit unsettled. I can't put my finger on exactly the reason but ever since I got back to work after 2 weeks off i've felt a bit mentally unstable. Not in an insane way I hasten to add, but in a way that something is nagging at me inside. I really hope I'm not about to have a revalation that I'm gay or something like that.

Anyway moving swiftly on I had a really fun weekend, again, which is probably part of the problem since it makes work so hard to comprehend each Monday. Nathan and Bowburn paid a visit to the urban hub that is Nottingham and we caught up over some snooker and then some beverages of the alcoholic variety. It turns out that Bowburn has been visiting Nottingham once in a while for the last year or so for trips to DTD and staying in a guesthouse literally directly opposite our flat. Hilarious to think him and Keys have been about 50 yards away from each other without realising, also surprising that they have never met in McDonalds over a Chicken Legend. Talking of which I have been a couple of times but only for a series of drinks and ice creams which I think adheres to the rules. I went tonight for a coke and ran good in life again getting my favourite female member of staff serving me. However once again she failed to ask "anything else" so my pre meditated response of "your phone number please" has had to be delayed for at least another few days. I don't think I could go out with someone who works in a McDonalds to be honest, even if she does have an incredible body to go with the 3 stars on her name badge. The thing is I put all the effort last week of going in wearing my suit and paying with a £50 note that I have to follow up with a second barrel now. Keeps me amused anyhow.

Tonight was the work annual pool tournament. I was felled miserably in the semi finals with what can only be described as an abysmal performance. Having whitewashed my opponents in my opening 5 matches I slipped down one to many pints from the free bar tab and missed a series of easy shots. I figure I will win this tournament at least 2 times out of every 3 years I'm working for KPMG so this slip up has put some pressure on me for the next one. There was a distinct lack of people from the tax department in attendance once again reaffirming my suspicions that I have a disappointingly unsociable department. It was nice to meet other people from the office but i can't help but feel i've gotten a pretty rough deal out of it with the people I work with. Considering the legendary people from other offices that I met in Edinburgh, I was hoping for more once I got back to Nottingham. It's nothing personal, and a few are great, but i really hope any new people starting in the next year or so are more up for socialising. Granted many probably had commitments this evening but to think I was the only person from the whole of the tax department (circa 40 people of which at least 8 are aged under 25) to show up is saddening. Man the fuck up and get drinking imo, who turns down a free bar tab ffs?! Cretinous.

I actually think what's nagging me might be something related to what I just had a moan about. I do have a few friends around in Nottingham but coming back to an empty flat each night is kinda crap. I wish Keys could have considered my feelings when he jetted off to Vegas for 6 weeks but he took the selfish root and put his dreams of mad dimes before my needs for someone to play Fifa against. Bloody disgrace imo, and I might have to blank him when he gets back.

Pokerwise I splashed out after winning so much last week and dared to play the $3 rebuy last night on Stars, along with a couple of other random donkaments. There were 5800 entrants with over 850 getting paid. I'll let you be the judge of how my mood was when I say I needed to come 18th out of that ludicrous field to break even. I would have been as well playing the $100 rebuy! Open shoving a double buyin every hand for 48 minutes without winning once was a truly staggering, and expensive, experience. Suffice to say I finished the rebuy period with only an average stack anyway but I guarentee I had whales, and I know the rest of my table did. Ironically I was in the top 10 with 200 left but got a bit bored and tired come midnight and went for the old trick of trying to accumulate a truly enormous stack to make a late night worthwhile. A lost race and one 3 bet too many led to a disappointing 120th finish which was still good for a loss in excess of 3 figures. All very amusing.

I also finally bought a desk, which means no more playing poker whilst sat on the floor in my room. Gamblers back was beginning to set in so now I'm more comfortable big wins and so called mad dimes should follow. Needless to say said desk is actually still flatpacked in its box 5 days after purchase and knowing my productivity it could be a while before anything happens on that front. Anyway I have bloggers elbow now so i'll leave it at that and try and come up with a more structured post soon, hopefully talking about my plans for poker in the near future and confirming that the reason I was feeling unsettled was not because I was gay. Inbits.