Valve shut or not shut...matters little. The fuels of today suck. They turn to gel far too quickly so I suspect that you have a carb that needs to be properly cleaned.

But first, you need to make sure that it is the carb. Remove the air cleaner. Put a few drops of fresh gasoline directly into the throat of the carb and then immediately try to start it. If it fires even once, then you know that you don't have an ignition problem and you need to remove the carb for cleaning.

Just exercise extreme caution while using gasoline. Keep the gas can well away from the engine while you are performing this test.

Apologies..did not even have a second of spare time to tinker until now. I dropped some gas into the spark plug hole. I fired for about 2 seconds, then died. So I guess I need to take apart the carb. Is this difficult. I am extremely hands on capable, but never done this before. Is it intuitive...take apart, clean, and put back together?