The prospect of living in Zimbabwe is something of a risk at the moment, so you could think that there would be very little appetite for visiting Zimbabwe’s gambling dens. In reality, it appears to be operating the opposite way around, with the desperate economic circumstances creating a bigger eagerness to bet, to attempt to discover a fast win, a way out of the crisis.
For nearly all of the locals subsisting on the abysmal local wages, there are two dominant forms of gambling, the national lotto and Zimbet. As with almost everywhere else on the planet, there is a national lotto where the probabilities of profiting are extremely tiny, but then the winnings are also remarkably big. It’s been said by market analysts who look at the situation that most don’t purchase a card with the rational expectation of hitting. Zimbet is centered on one of the local or the UK soccer leagues and involves determining the outcomes of future matches.
Zimbabwe’s casinos, on the other shoe, pander to the considerably rich of the country and travelers. Up till not long ago, there was a considerably large sightseeing business, founded on safaris and visits to Victoria Falls. The market collapse and connected crime have cut into this trade.
Among Zimbabwe’s casinos, 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 just one armed bandits. Mutare has the Monclair Hotel and Casino and the Leopard Rock Hotel and Casino, the pair of which offer gaming tables, one armed bandits and video machines, and Victoria Falls houses the Elephant Hills Hotel and Casino and the Makasa Sun Hotel and Casino, each of which has gaming machines and blackjack, roulette, and craps tables.
In addition to Zimbabwe’s casinos and the aforestated mentioned lottery and Zimbet (which is considerably like a parimutuel betting system), there are a total of two horse racing complexes in the state: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the second municipality) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.
Since the economy has deflated by beyond forty percent in recent years and with the connected poverty and bloodshed that has come about, it is not well-known how well the tourist business which funds Zimbabwe’s gambling halls will do in the next few years. How many of the casinos will carry through till conditions get better is merely unknown.