The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is a fact in some dispute. As data from this country, out in the very remote central part of Central Asia, tends to be awkward to achieve, this might not be too surprising. Whether there are 2 or 3 authorized casinos is the item at issue, perhaps not quite the most consequential article of data that we don’t have.
What certainly is credible, as it is of most of the ex-USSR states, and certainly correct of those in Asia, is that there will be a great many more not allowed and clandestine gambling dens. The change to approved wagering didn’t empower all the former locations to come out of the dark and become legitimate. So, the debate regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a minor one at most: how many approved ones is the element we’re trying to reconcile here.
We know that located in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (an amazingly original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and one armed bandits. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these contain 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, divided amongst roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the sq.ft. and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan casinos, it may be even more astonishing to find that both share an location. This seems most bewildering, so we can likely determine that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the authorized ones, ends at 2 casinos, one of them having changed their title a short time ago.
The state, in common with the majority of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a fast adjustment to free market. The Wild East, you might say, to allude to the anarchical conditions of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are in fact worth checking out, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see money being wagered as a form of communal one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century America.