The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is something in question. As information from this state, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, tends to be awkward to achieve, this might not be all that bizarre. Whether there are two or 3 approved gambling halls is the thing at issue, perhaps not quite the most all-important slice of info that we don’t have.
What no doubt will be correct, as it is of the lion’s share of the ex-Russian states, and certainly accurate of those located in Asia, is that there will be a great many more illegal and alternative gambling dens. The change to approved gaming did not encourage all the illegal places to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the clash over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a tiny one at best: how many approved gambling halls is the element we are attempting to answer here.
We know that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and one armed bandits. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these contain 26 slot machines and 11 table games, divided amidst roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the size and setup of these 2 Kyrgyzstan casinos, it may be even more surprising to find that both share an address. This seems most difficult to believe, so we can clearly state that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the authorized ones, is limited to two casinos, one of them having adjusted their title recently.
The country, in common with most of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a fast adjustment to commercialism. The Wild East, you might say, to refer to the anarchical conditions of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are in fact worth going to, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see money being played as a type of communal one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in 19th century u.s..
