The entire process of living in Zimbabwe is something of a gamble at the current time, so you might envision that there might be very little affinity for patronizing Zimbabwe’s gambling halls. Actually, it appears to be operating the other way, with the awful market circumstances leading to a larger eagerness to gamble, to attempt to find a quick win, a way out of the situation.
For almost all of the citizens surviving on the abysmal nearby earnings, there are 2 dominant forms of wagering, the state lottery and Zimbet. As with almost everywhere else in the world, there is a state lottery where the probabilities of hitting are extremely tiny, but then the jackpots are also surprisingly big. It’s been said by market analysts who study the subject that most don’t purchase a card with the rational expectation of profiting. Zimbet is based on either the local or the UK football divisions and involves determining the outcomes of future games.
Zimbabwe’s gambling halls, on the other hand, mollycoddle the astonishingly rich of the state and vacationers. Until recently, there was a very large vacationing industry, founded on safaris and visits to Victoria Falls. The economic collapse and connected violence have carved into this trade.
Among Zimbabwe’s gambling halls, 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 den, which has just the slot machine games. 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 offer table games, slot machines and video poker machines, and Victoria Falls houses the Elephant Hills Hotel and Casino and the Makasa Sun Hotel and Casino, both of which have video poker machines and tables.
In addition to Zimbabwe’s gambling dens and the above alluded to lottery and Zimbet (which is quite like a parimutuel betting system), there are also 2 horse racing tracks in the nation: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the 2nd municipality) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.
Since the economy has shrunk by more than 40% in recent years and with the connected poverty and violence that has come to pass, it isn’t known how well the sightseeing business which supports Zimbabwe’s casinos will do in the next few years. How many of them will be alive until conditions improve is merely not known.