However, a stable snapshot is or not more stable than a release version (I think a release version is an incoming version, continuously updating).
You have that backwards.
-CURRENT is the main development tree for FreeBSD. This is what will eventually become the next major version of FreeBSD. Right now, this is known as 12-CURRENT as it will eventually become FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE. There's few guarantees about the usability of this tree as things are constantly changing. You really need to know how to build, rebuild, debug, and troubleshoot things if you want to use this (not recommended for "normal" users).
Once a major release is made and branched off of -CURRENT, that becomes the new -STABLE tree. -STABLE is the development tree for the next minor release of FreeBSD. There are multiple -STABLE trees at the moment (10-STABLE, 11-STABLE). This tree is under fairly constant development, but the devs try to keep it usable at all times. Sometimes you need to run a -STABLE box; for example, if you need a newer driver than what's in the -RELEASE, or you need a specific bug fix that was made and the next -RELEASE isn't expected for a long time.
A -RELEASE version is basically just a point-in-time snapshot of the -STABLE tree that gets a lot of extra testing and becomes an official version of FreeBSD. These can be either major versions of FreeBSD (10.0, 11.0, etc) or a minor version (10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.3, 11.1, etc). This rarely changes; the only changes made to -RELEASEs are security fixes and major errata fixes (this is what the -pX numbers are after a version number: 10.3-RELEASE-p20).
IOW, you want to start with a -RELEASE. If and only if you run into issues should you try moving to a -STABLE version.
Hope that helps!