LAS VEGAS — Johnny Avello has priced up betting markets for everything from the Super Bowl to the Miss America pageant during his 30-plus years working on the Las Vegas Strip, but even he has never had to come up with odds for a table tennis tournament.
Yet that is exactly what Avello, known as the Wizard of Odds and the director of race and sports betting at the Wynn’s casino, was gearing up to do on a recent Tuesday morning, as Sin City prepared itself for its first excursion into the Olympics since the turn of the century.