The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in a little doubt. As data from this country, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, tends to be awkward to get, this may not be too astonishing. Whether there are 2 or three approved casinos is the thing at issue, maybe not in reality the most earth-shaking slice of data that we do not have.
What no doubt will be correct, as it is of the lion’s share of the old Soviet states, and absolutely truthful of those located in Asia, is that there will be many more illegal and alternative gambling dens. The change to authorized wagering did not empower all the former locations to come out of the dark into the light. So, the controversy regarding the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a minor one at best: how many authorized ones is the element we’re seeking to resolve here.
We know that located in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and one armed bandits. We can also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these have 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, split between roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the sq.ft. and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan casinos, it may be even more astonishing to find that both are at the same location. This seems most strange, so we can no doubt state that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the authorized ones, stops at two members, one of them having adjusted their title recently.
The state, in common with most of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a accelerated adjustment to commercialism. The Wild East, you could say, to refer to the lawless circumstances of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are certainly worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of social analysis, to see chips being gambled as a form of communal one-upmanship, the aristocratic consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century usa.