The complete number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is something in some dispute. As information from this country, out in the very remote central part of Central Asia, can be awkward to achieve, this may not be too astonishing. Regardless if there are 2 or 3 legal gambling dens is the item at issue, perhaps not in fact the most all-important bit of info that we do not have.
What certainly is correct, as it is of the majority of the ex-USSR states, and certainly true of those located in Asia, is that there will be many more not legal and clandestine gambling dens. The change to legalized betting did not energize all the underground places to come from the dark into the light. So, the contention regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a tiny one at most: how many approved ones is the element we are attempting to reconcile here.
We know that located in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a stunningly original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slots. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these offer 26 slot machines and 11 gaming tables, separated between roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and setup of these two Kyrgyzstan casinos, it may be even more astonishing to determine that both share an location. This appears most astonishing, so we can perhaps determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the authorized ones, stops at 2 members, 1 of them having changed their name just a while ago.
The country, in common with many of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a rapid conversion to commercialism. The Wild East, you might say, to refer to the lawless ways of the Wild West a century and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are in fact worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see cash being played as a type of communal one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century America.
