I'm happy to answer any questions about $ore as best as I can.
'Isn't $ore just gambling?'
No. All 25 blocks on the mines can combine into 1 block and the result is the same. All strategies lead to the same result in the long run as well.
In the long run, you're simply exchanging 9.6% of your $SOL for 1/40 ore (40 total sol deployed currently), so you're really buying 1/40 $ore for 0.096 sol. This number changes based on how many total deployed.
As such, it's simply a mathematical problem to figure out the cost of each ore you're mining and when to mine based off total sol deployed.
It is entirely possible to mine purely +EV, where every sol gives more ore than buying on market.
However, unrefined ore that you mine provides a 150% APR, so if you take that into account, you could accept a 5-10% loss on mining and recover it back in a day or 2.