The act of living in Zimbabwe is something of a risk at the moment, so you might imagine that there might be little appetite for visiting Zimbabwe’s gambling dens. Actually, it seems to be functioning the opposite way around, with the critical market conditions creating a bigger desire to wager, to attempt to find a quick win, a way out of the situation.
For the majority of the people surviving on the abysmal local earnings, there are 2 dominant styles of wagering, the state lotto and Zimbet. As with almost everywhere else on the globe, there is a state lotto where the probabilities of succeeding are remarkably tiny, but then the winnings are also very high. It’s been said by market analysts who study the situation that most do not buy a card with an actual belief of winning. Zimbet is based on either the domestic or the English soccer divisions and involves predicting the results of future matches.
Zimbabwe’s gambling halls, on the other shoe, look after the extremely rich of the society and travelers. Until a short while ago, there was a exceptionally large sightseeing business, based on nature trips and visits to Victoria Falls. The economic woes and connected bloodshed have cut into this market.
Among Zimbabwe’s gambling halls, there are 2 in the capital, Harare, the Carribea Bay Resort and Casino, which has five gaming tables and slots, and the Plumtree gambling den, which has just the slot machine games. The Zambesi Valley Hotel and Entertainment Center in Kariba also has just slot machines. Mutare contains the Monclair Hotel and Casino and the Leopard Rock Hotel and Casino, the two of which contain table games, one armed bandits and video poker machines, and Victoria Falls houses the Elephant Hills Hotel and Casino and the Makasa Sun Hotel and Casino, the two of which offer gaming machines and blackjack, roulette, and craps tables.
In addition to Zimbabwe’s casinos and the above mentioned lottery and Zimbet (which is considerably like a pools system), there are also 2 horse racing tracks in the state: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the 2nd municipality) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.
Given that the economy has shrunk by more than forty percent in the past few years and with the associated deprivation and crime that has resulted, it isn’t known how well the sightseeing industry which is the foundation for Zimbabwe’s gambling halls will do in the in the years to come. How many of the casinos will be alive until things get better is simply not known.
