The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in some dispute. As information from this country, out in the very most interior section of Central Asia, can be difficult to receive, this may not be too surprising. Whether there are two or three authorized casinos is the element at issue, maybe not in fact the most all-important slice of information that we do not have.
What will be accurate, as it is of the lion’s share of the ex-USSR states, and certainly true of those located in Asia, is that there no doubt will be a lot more illegal and clandestine casinos. The switch to authorized wagering didn’t drive all the underground places to come out of the dark into the light. So, the debate over the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a tiny one at best: how many legal ones is the item we’re attempting to reconcile here.
We know that located in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly unique name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and video slots. We will also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The two of these have 26 slot machines and 11 table games, split amidst roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and setup of these 2 Kyrgyzstan casinos, it may be even more astonishing to find that both are at the same location. This appears most strange, so we can clearly determine that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the accredited ones, is limited to two members, one of them having altered their title recently.
The country, in common with practically all of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a fast conversion to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you could say, to refer to the anarchical conditions of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are in fact worth checking out, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see cash being played as a type of collective one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in nineteeth century u.s..