The conventional wisdom is that against an ace-point game, clear from the rear and don't ask questions—though if you click through the link, you'll see that Woolsey added the proviso, "if the resulting position is relatively smooth." Here, the position isn't all that smooth after 8/2 7/4(2). The "pre-clearing" 7/4(2) 6/3(2) wins the rollout, despite leaving an indirect shot. White's imperfect board plays a role; I'm guessing that in David Levy's variant, the bot prefers playing safe.
Now that you know this position, perhaps you'll be tempted to pre-clear more often, but as Trice warns in his book, pre-clearing is usually a mistake. So use this information with care!
And finally, if the phrase "a little learning" sounds strange to you, you may want to check out the Google Ngram Viewer. The original term in Pope's Essay on Criticism was "learning."
                        |
| ||||
| XGID=-eBBCCBBA--------babbab---:1:-1:1:33:0:0:0:0:10 | |||||
| Blue to play 33 | |||||
| 1. | Rollout1 | 7/4(2) 6/3(2) | eq: +1.190 | |||
| ||||||
| 2. | Rollout1 | 8/2 7/4(2) | eq: +1.166 (-0.025) | |||
| ||||||
| 1 1296 Games rolled with Variance Reduction. Dice Seed: 271828 Moves: 3-ply, cube decisions: XG Roller | ||||||
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.19.208.pre-release