The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in a little doubt. As data from this nation, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, often is difficult to acquire, this may not be all that astonishing. Whether there are two or 3 legal gambling halls is the thing at issue, maybe not quite the most earth-shaking slice of information that we do not have.
What certainly is true, as it is of the lion’s share of the ex-Soviet states, and absolutely accurate of those located in Asia, is that there no doubt will be a great many more not legal and alternative gambling halls. The adjustment to authorized gambling didn’t drive all the former gambling halls to come from the dark and become legitimate. So, the battle regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a minor one at most: how many legal ones is the element we’re trying to resolve here.
We are aware that located in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slot machines. We will additionally see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these offer 26 slot machines and 11 gaming tables, split between roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the sq.ft. and setup of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more bizarre to find that they are at the same address. This seems most difficult to believe, so we can perhaps state that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the approved ones, stops at 2 members, one of them having altered their name recently.
The nation, in common with practically all of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a fast conversion to free market. The Wild East, you may say, to refer tothe chaotic ways of the Wild West a aeon and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are almost certainly worth checking out, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see cash being played as a form of civil one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in 19th century u.s..