It occurred to Ray that by taking a free cocktail and tipping $1, he could probably scale back the house edge very close to the breakeven point, maybe, who knows, even profit slightly. He needed to raise his bets a bit to qualify for the comp, but a quick math check told him he was still better off, EV-wise. He ordered a vodka and tonic he didn’t want.
the footnote says, "As a matter of fact, Ray quite disliked drinking, and hadn’t done much of it since college. But the math was unequivocal." lmao