The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is a fact in a little doubt. As info from this country, out in the very most interior area of Central Asia, tends to be awkward to receive, this might not be all that difficult to believe. Whether there are two or three approved gambling dens is the thing at issue, maybe not in fact the most all-important slice of information that we do not have.
What no doubt will be credible, as it is of the lion’s share of the old Russian states, and certainly accurate of those in Asia, is that there will be a great many more not approved and bootleg market casinos. The change to approved wagering didn’t drive all the former locations to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the bickering over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a minor one at best: how many accredited gambling dens is the element we are trying to answer here.
We are aware that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (an amazingly original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and video slots. We can also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these have 26 slots and 11 table games, split amidst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and setup of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more astonishing to find that both are at the same location. This seems most unlikely, so we can likely conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the approved ones, is limited to 2 members, one of them having adjusted their name a short time ago.
The nation, in common with nearly all of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a fast change to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you may say, to refer to the chaotic ways of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are in fact worth going to, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see money being played as a form of social one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in 19th century America.