The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in a little doubt. As information from this state, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, often is difficult to achieve, this might not be all that difficult to believe. Regardless if there are two or 3 authorized casinos is the thing at issue, maybe not in reality the most earth-shattering bit of information that we do not have.

What will be true, as it is of most of the old USSR nations, and definitely true of those in Asia, is that there will be a great many more illegal and alternative gambling dens. The switch to legalized betting did not empower all the former casinos to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the contention over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at best: how many approved ones is the thing we are seeking to resolve here.

We understand that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slot machines. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these offer 26 one armed bandits and 11 table games, separated amidst roulette, 21, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the square footage and layout of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it might be even more astonishing to determine that both share an address. This seems most bewildering, so we can clearly conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the approved ones, is limited to 2 casinos, 1 of them having adjusted their name recently.

The state, in common with practically all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a rapid change to commercialism. The Wild East, you might say, to reference the anarchical conditions of the Wild West a century and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are almost certainly worth checking out, therefore, as a piece of social analysis, to see chips being bet as a type of communal one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century u.s.a..