[ English ]

The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is a fact in a little doubt. As information from this country, out in the very most interior area of Central Asia, often is arduous to acquire, this may not be all that bizarre. Regardless if there are two or 3 legal casinos is the item at issue, maybe not in fact the most consequential article of data that we don’t have.

What no doubt will be correct, as it is of most of the old Soviet states, and certainly correct of those located in Asia, is that there no doubt will be a good many more not legal and bootleg market casinos. The switch to authorized gambling didn’t energize all the former places to come out of the dark into the light. So, the contention regarding the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a minor one at most: how many authorized ones is the thing we are attempting to resolve here.

We are aware that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably unique name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and video slots. We can additionally see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these offer 26 one armed bandits and 11 table games, divided amidst roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and setup of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it may be even more surprising to see that they share an address. This appears most astonishing, so we can no doubt determine that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the approved ones, stops at 2 members, 1 of them having adjusted their name a short time ago.

The state, in common with nearly all of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a accelerated conversion to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you could say, to reference the chaotic conditions of the Wild West a century and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are certainly worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of social analysis, to see dollars being gambled as a type of collective one-upmanship, the aristocratic consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in nineteeth century America.