The NBA Draft

Association’s (NBA) thirty teams (29 in the United States and one in Canada) can select young players who wish to join the league. These players usually come from college level, but in recent drafts a greater number of international and high school players have been drafted. As of the 2006 NBA Draft high school players gain eligibility for draft selection one year after their graduating class has finished high school, but only if they also are at least 19 years of age as of the end of the calendar year of the draft.

The NBA draft is currently divided into two rounds, with thirty picks per round. The order of selections is based on several rules. The first picks of the draft belong to the fourteen teams that did not enter the playoffs in that year’s season. These teams participate in a lottery to determine the order of the first three picks. Each team is assigned a number of chances based upon season standings to ‘win’ the lottery. After these three teams have been determined, the remaining picks are given out based on regular season record with the worst teams getting the highest remaining picks. This lottery assures each team can drop no more than 3 positions from its projected draft position. The lottery also prevents teams from throwing the season to ensure a top draft pick.

The next sixteen spots in the draft are reserved for the teams that made it into that season’s playoffs. The order of these sixteen teams’ selection is determined by their regular-season win-loss record, going from worst to best. Therefore, the team with the best record selects last. The team with the best record is not necessarily the champion; for example, in the 2004 NBA Draft, the last pick did not go to the 2004 NBA champion Detroit Pistons, but rather to the Indiana Pacers (this is unlike the NFL Draft, in which the Super Bowl champion always draws the final selection of the first round).

The order of selections in the second round are also based upon season standings, with the worst team picking first and the best picking last. There is no lottery for the second round. Teams are allowed to trade future draft picks (first and second round) as they would current players.

League rules prohibit a team from trading away their own future first-round picks in consecutive years. This rule was created partially as a reaction to the practices of the Cleveland Cavaliers in the early 1980s. Ted Stepien, who owned the team from 1980 to 1983, made a series of trades for players of questionable value that cost the team several years of first-round picks. The trades nearly destroyed the franchise; the NBA pressured Stepien into selling out, and in order to get a solid local owner (Gordon Gund), the league had to sweeten the deal by giving the Cavaliers several future bonus draft picks.

All U.S. players are automatically eligible upon the end of their college eligibility. Through 2005, U.S. players were also allowed to declare eligibility for the draft at any time between high school graduation and the completion of college eligibility. International players could declare eligibility in the calendar year of their 18th birthday, or later.

Starting with the 2006 NBA Draft, the eligibility rules have changed:

• All players, regardless of nationality, must be at least 19 years old during the calendar year of the draft.

• A U.S. player must also be at least one year removed from the graduation of his high school class.
This age limit for draftees is part of the new collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players union.

The NBA has established two draft declaration dates. All players who wish to be drafted, and are not automatically eligible, must declare their eligibility on or before the first declaration date.

After this date, prospective draftees may attend NBA pre-draft camps and individual team workouts to show off their skills and obtain feedback regarding their draft positions. A player may withdraw his name from consideration from the draft at any time before the final declaration date, which is one week before the draft. A player who declares for the draft will lose his college eligibility, even if he is not drafted, if any of the following is true:

• The player signs with an agent.

• The player has declared for and withdrawn from the draft in any previous year.

When a player is selected in the first round of the draft, the team that selected him is required to sign him to at least a one-year contract. Players selected in the second round are “owned” by the team for three years, but the teams are not required to sign them.

Players chosen earlier in the draft are generally regarded as better prospects than those selected later, but there is always a level of uncertainty around the selections. Past drafts are filled with examples of late-pick superstars and early-pick busts. Perhaps the most famous example of the uncertainty of the draft came in 1986, when Karl Malone was selected by the Utah Jazz with the thirteenth pick, but went on to become the second-leading scorer in NBA history and win multiple MVP awards. His teammate, John Stockton, was selected sixteenth the year before, but went on to become the all-time NBA leader in assists and steals.

Lottery Winners Lose It All

You have heard it time and again. Lottery Winners lose it all and trust fund babies waste their parent’s hard earned cash. In fact, up to 80% of the lottery winners in this country file bankruptcy within five years. Most of us say,” That would never happen to me. You would have to be really dumb to lose all that money.” Yet the very reason that these individuals let their money run through their fingers is the very reason that most of us are still working pay check to paycheck.
It is a lacking mindset that is responsible for our financial difficulties. They believe: 1) I don’t deserve this 2) I feel guilty because it happened to me and not ___________ 3) This can’t be real 4) etc…
Those with money that work their way up from the bottom or build the wealth they have easily, have the one thing that most of us lack – a million dollar mind set. All wealth begins with it and all wealth is maintained by cultivating this feeling of prosperity.
Their beliefs are: 1) I am wealthy. 2) If I lost it all tommorow, I could make it back easily. 3) I deserve to be wealthy
I would bet that most of us could compile a list of hundreds of things that we “want.” That sense of wanting means that we feel that we do not have these things. When we replace this wanting feeling with the sense of already having wealth, amazing things start to occur within our brains. We begin to come up with ways of having wealth instead of merely wishing and wanting it.
How do we create this million dollar mindset?
1) Think about being wealthy and write down any thoughts that come up.
Write down the objections that already play in your mind. Write down the excuses like” It takes money to make money.” And write down all the things that you wish you could have if only…
2) Release on those thoughts. Let them go and keep letting them go until the negative emotions go away with them.
3) Replace negative thoughts with positive ones.
4) Fill your mind with the images of what you want and picture yourself already having them.
5) See yourself as you will be. Feel what you will feel. Add audio and even the things that you will smell when you reach that state. ex. the type of perfume you might wear, the sound of bankers begging to give you loans, the feel of silk upon your skin, etc…
6) Keep releasing your negative emotions and thoughts until you have what you have been wanting all these years.
7) Act upon the incredible ideas that your subconscious shares with you fearlessly.

3 Reasons Why Most People Fail To Achieve Their Business Goals

New Year’s resolutions are launched with good intentions by the tens of millions every December. And somewhere along the way – usually in January – most of them become an afterthought. The mere topic of New Year’s resolutions only gets pulled up again in December, when planning (yet again) for the next year.

But a business goal is a horse of a different color.

Because business goals directly tie-in to one’s finances – which in turn affects how we live – we pursue them more aggressively. That’s the good news.

However in that pursuit lies several pitfalls. Pitfalls that are well hidden from the naked eye. Pitfalls that only reveal themselves once we begin our business goal achievement quest.

What are those pitfalls exactly? Here are three that strike most entrepreneurs at the least favorable moments:

1) You fell for the infamous “You are LIMITLESS” mantra.
Bestselling spiritual/self-help author Wayne Dyer often reminds his followers, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

And even though the soul may be free as vast as the universe – we are still confined to an overcoat of skin and bones and gravity. And it is this temporary overcoat that causes very real limitations.

I mean let’s face it, there can only be one American Idol in 2008 (or Canadian Idol or whatever Idol for the part of the world you live in). There’s one President, one Queen, one gold medalist slalom skier, one winner of the Best Actor on Academy Awards night.

And even though you may deeply yearn, affirm and visualize holding one these positions, you might not ever end up there.

A good friend of mine had an uncle who owned a horse ranch. He was a masterful rider and dreamt of becoming a famous jockey. But at the age of 16 he was almost 6 feet tall. Which is apparently too tall to become a jockey.

We – as human beings – all have limits. Limits caused by financial circumstances, family obligations, time constraints, lack of knowledge, lack of skill, age restrictions, height restrictions, and so on.

The thing is, limitations should never be viewed as stop signs. On the contrary, they allow us to confidently move in directions that work with our natural talents, abilities and lifestyles. Limitations allow us to see how we can improve ourselves.

So acknowledge your limitations. (It’s okay!) And if you can’t beat ’em, be confident and wise enough to work around ’em.

2) You didn’t anticipate the potential problems along the way – or the residuals of success.
As I write this article the jackpot for the New York state lottery is at $115 million dollars. Manhattan office workers file into the deli’s during their lunch hour to stand on those lottery lines, and fantasize amongst each other about winning.

From the middle class viewpoint, a big lottery win looks absolutely delicious. But Dr. Steven J. Danish, professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, paints a very different picture.

According to “Windfall not always a blessing, psychologists say,”
“Danish has counseled lottery winners for more than 12 years, and almost all his patients have had serious problems after collecting their winnings. After the initial shock passes, a sense of guilt often arrives, along with the hoards of people asking for money. Giving or leaving money to family — including mysterious, long-lost relatives — is often the biggest source of stress, he said.”

But this phenomena isn’t limited to lottery winners. It happens to entrepreneurs as well.

Yes, your eyes always have to be peeled for the potholes in the road. But you must also consider the problems that come with extreme success.

For example, will you have enough inventory if a positive review of your product generates a flood of 10,000 orders? How will you manage your time fulfilling orders? Do you have a babysitter lined up for business emergencies?

Don’t focus on failure. Do create a mindset of preparedness.

3) You focus a lot of energy on past mistakes, instead of learning from them and moving on.
A very dear friend whom I’ve known for 15 years has been wanting to start his own business for as long as I’ve known him. Early in our friendship he and his sister-in-law decided to do some kind of venture together. The venture flopped. He lost $4K, while she lost almost nothing.

Over a decade later, he still talks about how much he wants to go into business for himself. But the memory of losing that $4K re-plays itself over and over in his mind. It’s the reason why he commutes to a government job every day, instead of taking the plunge and starting his own business.

Sadly enough, he rationalizes his inability to move forward by saying that he’d rather be 100% sure that he’s doing the right thing, instead of going in with a half-baked idea.

My outlook as a seasoned entrepreneur is a little different. Nothing in life is 100% guaranteed. The best-laid plans can be thwarted in the blink of an eye. The best you can do is learn from the past (not LIVE in the past) and move on.

Washington State Bans Online Gambling

In the ongoing battle of Internet poker and online casino gambling, the state of Washington passed a law banning online gambling making it illegal for any resident inside of the state to participate in online casino play.

If you are a resident in the state of Washington, and you are caught in the act of online wagering, you could face a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. The legislation, Senate Bill 6613, has turned online gambling into a Class C Felony. This severe type of felony is generally reserved for the prosecution of sex offenders who fail to register with the state.

Poker players across the state are angry, confused, and even slightly offended about the passage of the legislation. The state of Washington has 65 casinos and card rooms spread across the state, and even a state lottery, yet online gambling has been axed. There is much confusion and debate revolving around the fact that the state has both brick and mortar casinos and a state lottery.

Things seemed to move very quickly when the bill was put on the fast track and sent up to the governor, Democrat Christine Gregoire. The House received the bill on February 16th, and a mere few weeks later, it was passed by a vote of 93 to 5, and put into effect. In addition to banning online wagering, the bill also put a halt to the effort to allow the state lottery to be offered online.

Overturning the legislation probably won’t be easy. To overturn the bill and get the law changed would require a 60% majority vote by both houses of the state legislature, which would not be easy. Both residents and onlookers from other states feel that the ban of online gambling is a ban on freedom of choice and is an insult to poker players everywhere.

The issue of banning online gambling has been floating around Congress for a while now, but it seems that Congress decided that these types of decisions are better suited for government control on the state level, as opposed to the national level. In the past several weeks, a handful of well respected professional poker players have gone before Congress and stated their arguments in terms of supporting online gambling for any American who wishes to participate, whether it be for recreation or on a more serious level.

The thought of online poker players in the state of Washington receiving the same punishment as sex offenders is extremely offensive, not to mention absurd, and it’s causing a stir in the online poker community. There are plans in action to attempt to overturn the legislation, but, as of now, the bill has been passed.

The Origin Of Giving Valentine’s Day Cards

Traditionally, mid-February was a Roman time to meet and court prospective mates. The Lupercian lottery (under penalty of mortal sin), Roman young men did institute the custom of offering women they admired and wished to court handwritten greetings of affection on February 14. The cards acquired St. Valentine’s name.

As Christianity spread, so did the Valentine’s Day card. The earliest extant card was sent in 1415 by Charles, duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. It is now in the British Museum.

In the sixteenth century, St. Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva, attempted to expunge the custom of cards and reinstate the lottery of saints’ names. He felt that Christians had become wayward and needed models to emulate. However, this lottery was less successful and shorter-lived than Pope Gelasius’s. And rather than disappearing, cards proliferated and became more decorative.

Cupid, the naked cherub armed with arrows dipped in love potion, beame a popular valentine image. He was associated with the holiday because in Roman mythology he is the son of Venus, goddess of love and beauty.

By the seventeenth century, handmade cards were oversized and elaborate, while store-bought ones were smaller and costly. In 1797, a British publisher issued ‘The Young Man’s Valentine Writer’, which contained scores of suggested sentimental verses for the young lover unable to compose his own.

Printers had already begun producing a limited number of cards with verses and sketches, called “mechanical valentines,” and a reduction in postal rates in the next century ushered in the less personal but easier practice of mailing valentines. That, in turn, made it possible for the first time to exchange cards anonymously, which is taken as the reason for the sudden appearance of racy verse in an era otherwise prudishly Victorian.

The burgeoning number of obscene valentines caused several countries to ban the practice of exchanging cards. In Chicago, for instance, late in the nineteenth century, the post office rejected some twenty-five thousand cards on the ground that they were not fit to be carried through the U.S. mail.

The first American publisher of valentines was printer and artist Esther Howland. Her elaborate lace cards of the 1870s cost from five to ten dollars, with some selling for as much as thirty-five dollars. Since that time, the valentine card business has flourished. With the exception of Christmas, Americans exchange more cards on Valentine’s Day than at any other time of the year. Just thinking about it brings memories of red construction paper, and little boxes of heart candies that say ‘Be Mine’!

The Magic Bullet Theory of Investing

Sadly, too many people believe that the successful in our society got that way through luck. So their financial plan is based not on earning and investing money, but waiting for their fairy godmother to show up.

Some “miracle” roads to riches:

The Lottery

What better way to get rich, but to play the lottery. Even though the odds are 200 million to one, somebody’s got to win – right? Why not you?

The ancillary to this is gambling. Go to Vegas or Atlantic City and blow the paycheck at the blackjack table or, even better, the roulette wheel.

Or go to the track and try to hit the trifecta.

Most gamblers will blow their winnings away sooner or later. They really aren’t in it for the money.

But lottery winners, those who get checks for millions of dollars, apparently have the same problem. I have read that the majority of lottery winners blow all that money away with five years or so.

Get Rich Quick Schemes

You get a letter in the mail or you see an ad on the internet. Just send in a few bucks or a few hundred bucks or a few thousand bucks and you too will be raking in $35,000 a week while you lounge on the beach.

Other variations are: $100 an hour stuffing envelopes; $500 an hour for filing out forms on your computer; or buying a pre-made website and sitting back while watching your bank account fill up.

Don’t forget to check out those government grants for paying off your debts.

In this case, the ones making the money are truly lucky – for finding another sucker to fall for their schemes.

Why not go down to Mexico and pick up a kilo of cocaine to sell on the streets. The markup – and your legal fees – will be tremendous.

Or give all your savings to the guy you met in the bar whose paying out a “guaranteed” 50% a month interest. You brother-in-law is in on this deal, so you know it really works.

Anybody ever heard of a guy named Ponzi?

The Government Will Take Care of Everything

There’s no such thing as a free lunch and, even though the government hands them out to anyone who asks, someone has to pay, in this case the taxpayers.

Did you know that the percentage of people not paying income taxes in the US is approaching 50%? If nobody’s paying, where does the free lunch come from? There are only so many “wealthy” taxpayers left to soak.

In New York City, the low income clients of the Housing Authority are being asked for “givebacks” in the form of higher fees. Social Security is on the ropes. The golden goose is beginning to run dry.

All government handouts come with strings attached. If the government gives you something, it will then want to tell you how to live. Are you ready for the trade-off?

Great Expectations

The long term average return of the stock market is 10% a year. However, if you do a little calculating, you see that you will never reach your goals at that rate. So you figure a 15% return.

There are many people who successfully beat that the stock market year after year. It takes a lot of work to do so. Even the pros have a hard time.

If you have acquired the learning and are willing to put in the effort, you may be able to safely make that assumption.

But don’t base your financial affairs on a simple assumption, hoping your dreams will come true through, just because you’ve been lucky all your life.

You can steal money or inherit it. Most people have to work for it and they have to work even harder to make it grow.

The Simplest Way to Get Online Passive Income

Based on my research, this seems to be the basic principle that website owners have been following to get passive income online:

* Get many people to come to your website
* Get them to click on your Adsense links

Sounds simple enough. Get people into your website from Google search, then link out to an Adsense Ad. Search In – Adsense Out.

Practically applying it to get sufficient commendable income, however, can be quite a challenge.

The first problem is how to get many visitors to your website.

That’s where Search Engine Optimization comes in. However, this is really easier said that done. It’s a bit of an artwork. You basically have to read the mind of an Internet user. What keywords would he use? Why would he visit your website? Do you have the content go get people interested enough to get to your website?

Basically, your goal is visibility. You have to be seen. You can do this using SEO or using traditional brand-building methods. Tell your friends, family and colleagues. If they have websites, politely ask if you could link with each other.

For those lucky few that are already on top of the search engines, this is not a problem. Others (including myself) would have to work hard at it. Look at FilipinoLinks.com. It’s been around for a very long time and has made quite a foundation. It would not be too difficult for its owners to tweak the website for SEO.

Experts have varied opinions on what to put in a website. Some say, put relevant important content – with around 500-1000 words on each of your website. Some say provide simple 300 word news posts.

Another option to get clicks would be to advertise online for keywords. Adwords is an example of a tool that can allow you to do this. There will be marketing expenses in this scenario. The goal here is to get more Adsense income than Adwords Expenses – which is really basic business sense. This is easier said than done, I tried it and got dismal results.

The next problem would be how to get visitors to click on Adsense links.

Well, the first thing that needs to be done is to get an Adsense account. It’s pretty easy to setup. After that, you need to put the Adsense links on your website. There are people who say make it blend it when the rest of your pages. Here, on my website, you can see my Adsense Ads that seem to be part of the overall theme.

Other experts say the more noticeable the advertisements, the more they will be clicked. In this case, the Ads stand out prominently – with a different, and sometimes contrasting color scheme. One tip given was actually position the Google Ad right next to an image/picture. Viewers tend to click on picture links, so more income potential income there.
What does this all mean for a Filipino Entrepreneur?

In my point of view, it means opportunities. Although I have just started experimenting on all of this myself, there seems to be a real possibility of gaining a little revenue. For example, I started this website (last January) and have,in my first month I gained US$7 from Adsense. It’s not much but consider this:

* My expenses so far have been the webhosting (US$4 monthly), and domain name (US$3 for one year – got it at a discount).
* If I continue getting US$7 a month, that would be, US$84 a year.
* My year’s hosting would be US$48
* My theoretical income for one year would be US$33.

There are other costs, of course, from writing the content for this website – electricity, less time to do other things, etc… I didn’t include it yet. If you had pre-existing content, this wouldn’t matter to you. Just upload it and you should be ready.

For example, if you had a song lyrics database, you could find a pretty reliable web developer, have him upload your database, and include AdSense. Optimize it for search and you should soon get some revenue. It will probably not be big, but enough to get you interested.

I remember on my last test with the wordtracker application, “Pinoy Ako Lyrics” were some of the top keywords I found. People were actually looking for lyrics of Filipino songs. Since new songs come out every month, whoever gets the lyrics out soonest would be found earlier.

If you had a database of all Philippine Lotto Results ever since it began, you could probably have a statistics analyzer custom-made from your website. It could give suggested lotto numbers based on historical info. That would be something a lot of people would go to.

There are probably other more interesting opportunities for the web-savvy Pinoy entrepreneur. As long as you get people to your website, and get them to click on an advertisement, there will be revenue.

Ranking the Best Gambling Business

There are gamblers and there ARE the gamblers. For those who cannot control their gambling addiction and those who want to delve into the business of gambling, there are some areas to turn in a profit, day or night.

Knowledge of state laws is crucial in making your choice as well as other regulatory and statutes that you need to be knowledgeable of. Remember, the law does not exclude anyone.

As in any type of business, the most crucial aspect in establishing your business is where to locate it. Location, location, location is the key. Unless you want to jumpstart the economy of a certain locality, choosing the perfect location is by far the most difficult decision to make.

Another decision you need to make requires you to evaluate which type of gambling business you would like to get into.

There are a lot of options to choose from in going into the gambling business. One can choose to establish a casino, a lottery outlet, a wagering system, bingo social halls, sweepstakes and dice games.

Casinos

Establishing a casino at the right location can make an individual (who can afford to build one on his own) or a group of individuals rich. But the initial investment is also very steep as the place needs to be at par with world class standards to be considered as the in place to be.

Lotteries

Everybody plays the lottery. Who doesn’t want to get rich quick? So getting a franchise or a license to open a lottery outlet is also another way of making a fast buck.

Wagering and/or Race tracks

Some go for the higher stakes of taking a chance on the outcome of the game from a jockey or from someone else. Building a race track for horses, for dogs or for any other animal is also a lucrative business that can be looked into. Provided state laws allow these animals to be a part of the gaming industry.

Bingo

People just love to play bingo. And formalizing a bingo social hall is just the right business around that corner if your community is into it day and night. Aside from its entertainment value, most charity institutions use bingo socials to forward their causes and solicit funding for their activities.

Sweepstakes and dice games

These have fairly been in the community long before the more elaborate and higher stakes gambling activities available now. However, these do not lose their charms as they provide a high that most people just can handle in their daily lives.

Last word on any gambling business you would want to establish, know your state laws.

NFL Players And Money

One of the questions people always ask me about being an NFL player is, “what is it like making so much money at such a young age?”

I have to say that it is very difficult to go from being young and having no money to being young and a millionaire because you do not know how to be financially responsible. It’s just like winning the lottery, and as you know from reading about lottery winners, most lottery winners go broke within 10 years after winning the lottery. Well, it is not that much different with professional sports players. The reason for this is most professional athletes, and lottery winners, were never taught money management skills. Going from being broke one day to being a millionaire the next day is a huge change in your life, mostly because once you have money, everybody wants you to give it to them, and most of the time you do.

I came from a single family home without a father, which is something many professional NFL players have in common. I am also African American and my family did not have a lot of money, which is also very common among NFL players. Because of this, I was never taught how to manage money responsibly and plan for my future. I went from being broke one day to being drafted into the NFL and becoming a millionaire.

A huge problem with being young and having a lot of money is the pressure by just about everybody including fellow players to spend a lot of money very quickly. When you are rich, everybody wants your money, especially your family and friends. My mother, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, etc. all wanted to borrow money from me. And of course I gave it to them. Then, you have girlfriends and wives who want you to buy them lots of expensive presents like cars, jewelry and clothes because you are rich and they want to show off to their friends. You also have charities, investors, and businesspeople all asking for your money—and you end up giving it to them.

But possibly the worst of all is the other players because when it comes to money it is the blind leading the blind. We all spend our money as if it will never run out because we are uneducated in financial responsibility. For example, for you to be cool and respected by the other players, you have to keep up with them. So, if one player buys a new SUV, you want to buy one too. I mean, you can’t be an NFL player and drive a normal car like a Honda Civic. You have to drive an expensive Hummer, Cadillac Escapade, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, etc.

You also have to have a huge expensive house. All the other players do and if you just live in an average house, they look down at you. So, we spend a fortune buying huge houses for ourselves and for our parents that we do not need. And of course there is the jewelry. We spend so much money on jewelry it is insane. It is nothing for a player to spend $100,000 a year or more buying jewelry, and that is just for us. That does not include all the jewelry we buy for our family, wives, and girlfriends. It is all extremely irresponsible. But, when you have so many people putting pressure on you every day to buy things and keep up with the other NFL players, it becomes much easier to say yes than to say no, even as you are watching all of your money disappear.

Another problem is as a wealthy NFL player, you are expected to flip the bill for everything. Whenever you go out to restaurant, you are the person who pays for everybody. And, when you go out with other players or your buddies, it is always to a fancy club where we go to the VIP section and spend thousands of dollars on fancy champagne and drinks—for everybody. I have known players who have spent over $25,000 in one night at a club. And then they go and do it over and over so they can be the “big man.”

Another problem NFL players have is women who are after us for our money and our status. And many of these women are gold diggers. If we were not rich athletes these beautiful women would probably not look twice at us. But now that we are rich and well known, women chase us constantly. This almost always leads to us marrying a woman we shouldn’t marry and then getting divorced after a couple of years and losing a large percentage of our money in the divorce. I made this mistake myself and it cost me dearly and still costs me.

In close, being a wealthy athlete is much more difficult than people think because there is so much pressure on us to spend our money as quickly as possible. Money magnifies problems, it does not eliminate them as most people think it does.

Zimbabwe Casinos

The entire process of living in Zimbabwe is something of a gamble at the moment, so you might think that there would be little appetite for patronizing Zimbabwe’s casinos. Actually, it seems to be working the other way around, with the desperate economic circumstances leading to a greater desire to gamble, to try and find a quick win, a way out of the problems.

For most of the locals living on the meager local wages, there are two popular forms of gambling, the national lottery and Zimbet. Just as with most everywhere else in the world, there is a national lottery where the odds of winning are extremely low, but then the prizes are also extremely high. It’s been said by economists who study the subject that most do not buy a ticket in the rational expectation of winning; people understand the odds well enough. Rather, the possession of a ticket that might win that fortune acts as a pleasure in itself, dreaming about what could be done, if it did win. Zimbet is based on either the local or the UK football leagues and involves predicting the results of future matches.

Zimbabwe’s casinos, on the other hand, cater to the very rich of the society and tourists. Until recently, there was a very large tourist industry, based on safaris and visits to Victoria Falls. The economic woes and associated violence have cut into this trade.

Amongst Zimbabwe’s casions, there are two in the capital, Harare, the Carribea Bay Resort and Casino, which has five gaming tables and slots, and the Plumtree Casino, which has just the slot machines. The Zambesi Valley Hotel and Entertainment Centre in Kariba also has just slots. Mutare has the Monclair Hotel and Casino and the Leopard Rock Hotel and Casino, both of which have gaming tables and slot and video machines, and Victoria Falls has the Elephant Hills Hotel and Casino and the Makasa Sun Hotel and Casino, both of which have gaming machines and tables.

In addition to Zimbabwe’s casinos and the above mentoined lottery and Zimbet (which is very like a pools 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 economy has shrunk by more than 40% in recent years and with the associated poverty and violence that has resulted, it isn’t known how well the tourist industry which supports Zimbabwe’s casinos will do in the near future. How many of them will survive until things improve is simply unknown.