[ English ]

The act of living in Zimbabwe is somewhat of a gamble at the moment, so you might imagine that there would be little appetite for visiting Zimbabwe’s gambling dens. In reality, it seems to be working the opposite way around, with the crucial market conditions leading to a higher eagerness to play, to try and discover a fast win, a way out of the crisis.

For many of the citizens surviving on the meager local money, there are 2 popular types of gaming, the national lottery and Zimbet. As with almost everywhere else on the planet, there is a national lotto where the chances of profiting are unbelievably tiny, but then the prizes are also very high. It’s been said by economists who study the subject that the lion’s share do not purchase a ticket with an actual assumption of winning. Zimbet is based on one of the national or the UK football divisions and involves predicting the results of future games.

Zimbabwe’s casinos, on the other foot, mollycoddle the incredibly rich of the society and sightseers. Up until recently, there was a incredibly big tourist business, founded on safaris and visits to Victoria Falls. The economic anxiety and associated crime have cut into this market.

Among Zimbabwe’s gambling halls, there are 2 in the capital, Harare, the Carribea Bay Resort and Casino, which has five gaming tables and slot machines, and the Plumtree gambling hall, which has only slot machines. The Zambesi Valley Hotel and Entertainment Center in Kariba also has just slot machines. Mutare contains the Monclair Hotel and Casino and the Leopard Rock Hotel and Casino, both of which offer table games, one armed bandits and video machines, and Victoria Falls has 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 gambling halls and the previously alluded to lottery and Zimbet (which is considerably like a pools system), there is a total of two horse racing tracks in the state: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the 2nd metropolis) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.

Since the economy has contracted by more than 40% in recent years and with the connected deprivation and conflict that has cropped up, it is not well-known how well the tourist industry which funds Zimbabwe’s gambling halls will do in the in the years to come. How many of the casinos will carry through till conditions improve is basically unknown.