The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is something in some dispute. As data from this nation, out in the very remote interior section of Central Asia, can be hard to acquire, this may not be too bizarre. Whether there are two or 3 authorized gambling halls is the thing at issue, perhaps not quite the most earth-shaking bit of data that we do not have.
What no doubt will be true, as it is of the lion’s share of the old Russian nations, and certainly true of those in Asia, is that there no doubt will be a good many more illegal and backdoor gambling dens. The adjustment to legalized gambling did not encourage all the underground gambling dens to come from the dark into the light. So, the debate over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a tiny one at best: how many legal ones is the element we’re trying to answer here.
We are aware that in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably unique title, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slot machine games. We will also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these have 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, divided amongst roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the square footage and setup of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more surprising to see that they are at the same location. This seems most difficult to believe, so we can no doubt state that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the legal ones, ends at 2 casinos, 1 of them having adjusted their title a short while ago.
The state, in common with the majority of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a rapid change to commercialism. The Wild East, you may say, to refer to the chaotic ways of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are almost certainly worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see dollars being played as a type of collective one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century u.s..