The prospect of living in Zimbabwe is something of a gamble at the moment, so you could think that there would be little appetite for supporting Zimbabwe’s gambling dens. In fact, it appears to be working the other way around, with the desperate market circumstances creating a larger ambition to wager, to try and find a fast win, a way out of the situation.
For many of the people surviving on the meager nearby wages, there are 2 popular types of gambling, the state lottery and Zimbet. Just as with almost everywhere else in the world, there is a national lottery where the chances of succeeding are unbelievably small, but then the winnings are also extremely big. It’s been said by economists who study the idea that the majority do not purchase a ticket with the rational expectation of profiting. Zimbet is founded on either the domestic or the British football divisions and involves predicting the results of future games.
Zimbabwe’s gambling halls, on the other shoe, pamper the incredibly rich of the society and vacationers. Up till recently, there was a very big sightseeing business, built on nature trips and trips to Victoria Falls. The market collapse and associated bloodshed have carved into this trade.
Amongst Zimbabwe’s casinos, there are two in the capital, Harare, the Carribea Bay Resort and Casino, which has 5 gaming tables and one armed bandits, and the Plumtree gambling hall, which has just the slot machines. The Zambesi Valley Hotel and Entertainment Center in Kariba also has only slots. Mutare contains the Monclair Hotel and Casino and the Leopard Rock Hotel and Casino, both of which contain table games, slot machines 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 slot machines and blackjack, roulette, and craps tables.
In addition to Zimbabwe’s gambling halls and the aforestated talked about lottery and Zimbet (which is considerably like a parimutuel betting system), there are a total of two horse racing tracks in the state: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the second metropolis) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.
Since the market has contracted by more than forty percent in recent years and with the connected poverty and violence that has arisen, it is not understood how well the vacationing business which is the backbone of Zimbabwe’s gambling halls will do in the near future. How many of the casinos will carry through until conditions get better is basically unknown.