Contrary to popular belief, casinos were opened after Castro took over, for a very short time .

Immediately after Castro took over, the first thing he ordered and the people happily obeyed, was the destruction of casinos. Both signs of the "Capitalism" they had just destroyed. As shown below, they destroyed all casinos and brought most of the contents outside to burn them.

However, after the USA condemnation and the American inflow of tourism and cash came to a sudden stop, the new regime soon started to get into economical trouble. The new alliance with the USSR appeared promising, but at first, very little money arrived from that direction. In the midst of all these, the old workers on the casinos and hotels, now without a job for quite some time, went into the street protesting that the revolution had taken away their jobs & income. Finally Castro agreed and open several casinos using the old dealers and staff, and the excuse that, because all the money made from this venture would go back to the people, it would not tarnish the idealism of “socialism”

Unfortunately for them, the USA tourist were very few, mostly quite scare of the militia now everywhere, including the casinos. The new Russian tourists & soldiers, although plenty, were quite poor, and very few could afford to play in the casinos. The flashy & elegant atmosphere found in the old casinos was lost and in its place the casinos were smaller places, barely painted and where few people even wore a suit. Not what you expect would attract the high flyers!

The experiment did not work and Castro announced once again that it had been a mistake to allow some images of the previously destroyed capitalism to smudge the clean vision of Socialism. Except for some other quasi casinos used in the 80's, mostly at sea, no real intent to encourage gambling showed up again.

Here are some pictures of the 50's casino, some of the destruction of several casinos and finally a picture of a casino during the Castro era.

Note the atmosphere of the Castro casino vs the previous one.

But, most important please look at the chips used in the Castro casino. We have looked everywhere in Cuba & outside to find chips with similar designs. In fact, we have yet to find any group of chips that could be attributed to the Castro Casinos!
If anyone has seen a chip with similar design PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!.