The complete number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is a fact in a little doubt. As data from this state, out in the very remote central section of Central Asia, tends to be arduous to receive, this might not be all that difficult to believe. Whether there are 2 or 3 legal casinos is the item at issue, perhaps not really the most all-important piece of information that we don’t have.
What will be true, as it is of the majority of the old USSR nations, and certainly correct of those located in Asia, is that there will be a good many more not legal and clandestine gambling dens. The switch to authorized wagering didn’t empower all the underground locations to come from the dark and become legitimate. So, the bickering over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a tiny one at best: how many accredited casinos is the item we are trying to resolve here.
We understand that in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slot machines. We can additionally find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these contain 26 slots and 11 table games, divided between roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and layout of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it might be even more surprising to find that the casinos are at the same address. This appears most strange, so we can no doubt conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the approved ones, is limited to 2 casinos, 1 of them having altered their name a short while ago.
The country, in common with almost all of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a rapid change to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you could say, to reference the chaotic ways of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are certainly worth going to, therefore, as a piece of anthropological analysis, to see dollars being wagered as a form of communal one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in nineteeth century us of a.