[ English ]

The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in question. As data from this nation, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, can be arduous to achieve, this might not be all that bizarre. Whether there are 2 or three accredited gambling halls is the item at issue, maybe not quite the most consequential piece of information that we do not have.

What will be credible, as it is of many of the old Russian nations, and certainly truthful of those in Asia, is that there no doubt will be a lot more not legal and clandestine gambling halls. The change to approved gambling did not encourage all the underground locations to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the debate over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a small one at best: how many approved ones is the thing we’re attempting to resolve here.

We know that located in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly unique name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slot machine games. We can additionally find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The two of these have 26 slot machines and 11 gaming tables, divided amidst roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the size and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more surprising to determine that the casinos are at the same address. This seems most difficult to believe, so we can no doubt conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the legal ones, is limited to two members, one of them having altered their name not long ago.

The nation, in common with practically all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a rapid conversion to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you might say, to allude to the anarchical conditions of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are in fact worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see cash being wagered as a type of civil one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century us of a.