>>Chances of formulating 3 as "between" without too much recalc for border value exclusion ?
>
>I already tried to stay away from the between usage. Have you seen a better performance when using it?

Yes, but only once in a big way and that was last century.
There is no reason for optimizers not to pick the best way for both ways to formulate,
but OTOH I've been bitten by assuming too much intelligence baked into the products I use ;-)