The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in a little doubt. As details from this state, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, tends to be hard to receive, this may not be too bizarre. Whether there are two or 3 accredited gambling halls is the element at issue, perhaps not really the most consequential bit of information that we do not have.
What no doubt will be true, as it is of most of the ex-Russian nations, and definitely accurate of those in Asia, is that there will be a good many more not approved and clandestine gambling halls. The adjustment to acceptable gaming did not drive all the illegal places to come out of the dark and become legitimate. So, the battle regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at best: how many approved ones is the thing we are trying to answer here.
We understand that in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably unique name, 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. The two of these have 26 video slots and 11 table games, separated amidst roulette, 21, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the square footage and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it may be even more astonishing to see that both share an location. This seems most strange, so we can no doubt conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the authorized ones, is limited to 2 casinos, one of them having adjusted their title just a while ago.
The country, in common with many of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a fast conversion to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you could say, to reference the lawless conditions of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are almost certainly worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see cash being played as a form of collective one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in nineteeth century u.s..