em> it won&#39;t throw an exception, because we&#39;ve checked it. We just want to get at the value - don&#39;t bother with any more checks. <em>That&#39;s exactly what <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/72cec0e0.aspx">GetValueOrDefault()</a> does</em>. In the case where the value is non-null, GetValueOrDefault() and the Value property obviously do the same thing - but intuition tells me that GetValueOrDefault() can do it quicker, because it doesn&#39;t actually need to check anything. It can 