The entire process of living in Zimbabwe is somewhat of a risk at the moment, so you may imagine that there might be very little affinity for visiting Zimbabwe’s gambling halls. In reality, it appears to be working the opposite way around, with the atrocious market conditions leading to a greater ambition to bet, to attempt to discover a fast win, a way out of the crisis.

For almost all of the people subsisting on the tiny nearby wages, there are 2 established types of betting, the state lotto and Zimbet. Just as with almost everywhere else in the world, there is a state lottery where the probabilities of profiting are extremely low, but then the jackpots are also remarkably big. It’s been said by financial experts who look at the idea that many don’t buy a ticket with a real assumption of winning. Zimbet is built on one of the national or the English soccer divisions and involves predicting the outcomes of future games.

Zimbabwe’s casinos, on the other shoe, cater to the exceedingly rich of the state and tourists. Up till recently, there was a very big sightseeing business, founded on safaris and visits to Victoria Falls. The market anxiety and connected bloodshed have cut into this trade.

Amongst Zimbabwe’s gambling dens, 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 slots. The Zambesi Valley Hotel and Entertainment Center in Kariba also has only one armed bandits. Mutare contains the Monclair Hotel and Casino and the Leopard Rock Hotel and Casino, the two of which offer gaming tables, one armed bandits and video poker machines, and Victoria Falls houses the Elephant Hills Hotel and Casino and the Makasa Sun Hotel and Casino, each of which offer video poker machines and table games.

In addition to Zimbabwe’s casinos and the above alluded to lottery and Zimbet (which is quite like a parimutuel betting system), there are also two horse racing tracks in the country: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the second city) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.

Given that the market has deflated by more than 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 funds Zimbabwe’s gambling halls will do in the in the years to come. How many of them will carry through until conditions get better is merely unknown.