[Someone]

I disagree. Going for the low-variance option is a good idea if you do not want to lose, but not one if you want to win.

Consider a game where one player gets two items for every roll above 7, another two items for every roll below 7, and a third one item for every roll that is not 7. With any not perfectly even distribution of rolls, one of the first two players will have the highest production, and the other of the two the lowest. There is no set of throws that will give the last player the most produce.

[anthonyb]

Except that rolling high vs. low vs. a balance of both all have equal probabilities.

[gte910h]

A good distribution of numbers is a dominent strategy in catan due to the robber taking half your goods if you have more than 7 cards when a robber is rolled.

Late game overclustering (aka, being on too few numbers) is very brittle to rolls of 7 and additionally to the robber stopping production there as well.