The prospect of living in Zimbabwe is something of a risk at the current time, so you may imagine that there would be little appetite for visiting Zimbabwe’s gambling dens. Actually, it appears to be operating the other way, with the atrocious market circumstances leading to a greater desire to wager, to try and locate a quick win, a way out of the situation.
For nearly all of the people subsisting on the tiny local money, there are two established forms of gaming, the national lottery and Zimbet. Just as with most everywhere else in the world, there is a state lotto where the probabilities of profiting are surprisingly small, but then the winnings are also remarkably big. It’s been said by financial experts who study the subject that the majority do not buy a card with the rational belief of hitting. Zimbet is founded on one of the local or the UK soccer divisions and involves determining the outcomes of future games.
Zimbabwe’s casinos, on the other foot, cater to the incredibly rich of the state and tourists. Up till not long ago, there was a incredibly substantial vacationing business, based on nature trips and trips to Victoria Falls. The economic woes and associated violence have cut into this market.
Among Zimbabwe’s casinos, there are two in the capital, Harare, the Carribea Bay Resort and Casino, which has five gaming tables and slot machines, and the Plumtree Casino, which has just the slots. The Zambesi Valley Hotel and Entertainment Center in Kariba also has just slots. Mutare contains the Monclair Hotel and Casino and the Leopard Rock Hotel and Casino, the pair of which contain table games, slot machines and video 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 table games.
In addition to Zimbabwe’s casinos and the previously alluded to lottery and Zimbet (which is considerably like a pools system), there are a total of two horse racing tracks in the country: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the 2nd metropolis) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.
Seeing as that the economy has shrunk by beyond forty percent in the past few years and with the connected poverty and bloodshed that has cropped up, it isn’t known how healthy the tourist business which supports Zimbabwe’s gambling halls will do in the next few years. How many of them will still be around till things get better is merely unknown.
