[ English ]

The complete number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is something in a little doubt. As details from this nation, out in the very remote central section of Central Asia, can be awkward to receive, this might not be all that bizarre. Regardless if there are two or 3 approved gambling dens is the thing at issue, perhaps not quite the most all-important bit of data that we don’t have.

What certainly is correct, as it is of many of the old Soviet states, and absolutely correct of those located in Asia, is that there no doubt will be many more illegal and underground gambling halls. The adjustment to approved betting did not empower all the former gambling dens to come from the illegal into the legal. So, the debate over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at best: how many accredited ones is the item we are trying to resolve here.

We understand that located in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously original name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and one armed bandits. We can additionally find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these contain 26 video slots and 11 gaming tables, separated between roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the sq.ft. and setup of these 2 Kyrgyzstan casinos, it might be even more bizarre to determine that they share an address. This appears most bewildering, so we can no doubt state that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the legal ones, is limited to 2 casinos, one of them having changed their name recently.

The nation, in common with the majority of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a rapid adjustment to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you might say, to refer to the anarchical conditions of the Wild West a century and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are in fact worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of anthropological analysis, to see money being gambled as a form of communal one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in nineteeth century u.s.a..