The prospect of living in Zimbabwe is something of a risk at the moment, so you might imagine that there might be very little appetite for going to Zimbabwe’s casinos. In fact, it seems to be working the opposite way around, with the atrocious market circumstances leading to a higher eagerness to bet, to attempt to find a quick win, a way out of the crisis.
For nearly all of the people subsisting on the abysmal nearby wages, there are two dominant styles of gaming, the state lotto and Zimbet. As with most everywhere else in the world, there is a national lottery where the odds of succeeding are extremely tiny, but then the winnings are also surprisingly high. It’s been said by market analysts who study the subject that the majority don’t buy a card with an actual expectation of profiting. Zimbet is built on either the domestic or the English soccer divisions and involves predicting the outcomes of future matches.
Zimbabwe’s casinos, on the other hand, mollycoddle the astonishingly rich of the country and tourists. Up till recently, there was a considerably large sightseeing industry, founded on safaris and visits to Victoria Falls. The market woes and associated violence have carved into this market.
Among Zimbabwe’s gambling dens, there are two in the capital, Harare, the Carribea Bay Resort and Casino, which has five gaming tables and one armed bandits, and the Plumtree gambling den, which has only slot machine games. The Zambesi Valley Hotel and Entertainment Center in Kariba also has only slot machines. Mutare has the Monclair Hotel and Casino and the Leopard Rock Hotel and Casino, both of which have gaming tables, slots and video poker machines, and Victoria Falls has the Elephant Hills Hotel and Casino and the Makasa Sun Hotel and Casino, the two of which has gaming machines and blackjack, roulette, and craps tables.
In addition to Zimbabwe’s gambling halls and the aforementioned mentioned lottery and Zimbet (which is quite like a pools system), there are also two horse racing complexes in the country: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the 2nd city) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.
Seeing as that the market has deflated by more than 40% in recent years and with the connected deprivation and crime that has come about, it isn’t well-known how well the vacationing business which supports Zimbabwe’s gambling dens will do in the near future. How many of them will be alive till conditions get better is merely not known.
