But this is what the Vegas analogy means: if you follow the optimal strategy while gambling and stop when you've gambled enough to be comped a room, you'll be +EV compared to the normal cost of the room. It's just as easy as paying off your credit card bill every month, assuming similar levels of financial discipline.
Hmm, I didn't know that the comps worked out that way; I always assumed that the value of the comp wound up less than your expected losses even with optimal strategy. Nice to know.
Still, it's a lot easier to remember to pay a bill on time every month than it is to play optimal-strategy blackjack for hours with no mistakes.
The analogy holds, but it's not all that good an analogy since there's a severe difference in the difficulty and the risk/reward ratio. Some things are better explained in their own terms than via an analogy.
The kind of person who vacations in Vegas isn't likely to be someone who makes rational economic decisions about +EV comps, so Vegas isn't worried about offering +EV comps. If you're a rational +EV economic decision-maker, you either don't go to Vegas, or you live in Vegas and make your living beating tourists at poker. Either way, you're not the one being comped a room--more often, it'll be someone who goes on tilt.
