The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in a little doubt. As details from this country, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, often is awkward to acquire, this might not be too astonishing. Whether there are two or 3 legal casinos is the item at issue, maybe not quite the most all-important article of info that we do not have.

What will be credible, as it is of most of the ex-USSR nations, and certainly truthful of those in Asia, is that there will be a lot more not allowed and alternative casinos. The change to approved betting didn’t drive all the illegal places to come out of the dark and become legitimate. So, the bickering over the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a minor one at best: how many approved ones is the element we’re trying to reconcile here.

We understand that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and video slots. We will also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these have 26 slots and 11 gaming tables, divided amidst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the size and layout of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more bizarre to find that they share an location. This appears most strange, so we can likely determine that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the approved ones, ends at two members, 1 of them having altered their name recently.

The country, in common with nearly all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a fast change to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you could say, to allude to the chaotic ways of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are in fact worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see cash being bet as a form of collective one-upmanship, the aristocratic consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in nineteeth century u.s.a..