The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in a little doubt. As info from this state, out in the very remote central section of Central Asia, tends to be awkward to acquire, this might not be all that surprising. Whether there are 2 or 3 accredited casinos is the item at issue, maybe not really the most consequential piece of information that we don’t have.
What will be true, as it is of most of the ex-Russian states, and certainly accurate of those located in Asia, is that there will be a lot more not approved and clandestine gambling dens. The change to acceptable betting didn’t drive all the illegal places to come away from the dark and become legitimate. So, the contention regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a small one at best: how many approved casinos is the item we are trying to reconcile here.
We are aware that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (an amazingly original name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slot machines. We will also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these have 26 slot machines and 11 table games, split amongst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the size and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more astonishing to find that they are at the same location. This appears most bewildering, so we can clearly determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the legal ones, stops at two members, 1 of them having adjusted their name recently.
The nation, in common with many of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a fast conversion to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you may say, to reference the anarchical ways of the Wild West a century and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are in reality worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see cash being wagered as a form of social one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in nineteeth century u.s.a..