The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in a little doubt. As data from this country, out in the very most interior area of Central Asia, often is difficult to receive, this may not be all that astonishing. Whether there are 2 or three accredited casinos is the element at issue, perhaps not in reality the most earth-shaking slice of data that we do not have.
What certainly is accurate, as it is of most of the old Russian states, and certainly true of those located in Asia, is that there certainly is a good many more not allowed and alternative gambling halls. The adjustment to authorized betting didn’t drive all the former casinos to come from the illegal into the legal. So, the bickering over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a minor one at most: how many legal ones is the thing we’re trying to reconcile here.
We understand that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and video slots. We can also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The two of these offer 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, separated amidst roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the square footage and setup of these 2 Kyrgyzstan casinos, it may be even more bizarre to find that they are at the same address. This appears most confounding, so we can perhaps determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the legal ones, is limited to 2 casinos, 1 of them having changed their name recently.
The state, in common with the majority of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a accelerated change to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you could say, to reference the lawless circumstances of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are almost certainly worth checking out, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see money being wagered as a form of civil one-upmanship, the aristocratic consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in 19th century us of a.