The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in a little doubt. As information from this country, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, can be awkward to get, this may not be all that astonishing. Whether there are 2 or 3 approved gambling dens is the element at issue, perhaps not really the most earth-shattering article of info that we don’t have.
What no doubt will be credible, as it is of the majority of the ex-Russian nations, and certainly correct of those in Asia, is that there will be a great many more not approved and backdoor casinos. The change to legalized gaming did not empower all the former places to come from the dark into the light. So, the controversy regarding the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a minor one at most: how many legal ones is the item we’re trying to reconcile here.
We know that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slot machine games. We can additionally find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these offer 26 video slots and 11 gaming tables, split amidst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the size and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more surprising to find that they are at the same address. This appears most difficult to believe, so we can clearly state that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the authorized ones, stops at 2 casinos, 1 of them having changed their title a short while ago.
The state, in common with almost all of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a fast adjustment to capitalism. The Wild East, you might say, to refer to the lawless conditions of the Wild West a century and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are actually worth checking out, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see money being played as a form of civil one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in nineteeth century America.