  The study of nuclear physics using lattice QCD is hindered by an
exponentially large signal-to-noise problem which is conventionally alleviated
by raising the quark masses to unphysically high values. We propose a novel
form of partial quenching for calculations involving nucleons in which the sea
quark masses are taken to be smaller than the valence quark masses. It is shown
that lowering the sea quark masses toward their physical values actually
improves signal-to-noise. An optimized approach to the physical point in the
(m_s, m_v) plane is proposed, with a full analysis of the cost benefit.
Improvements in computing time of ~ 10^(2(A-1)), where A is the number of
nucleons in the system, are shown to be possible.
