The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is something in a little doubt. As details from this country, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, often is difficult to acquire, this might not be all that difficult to believe. Whether there are two or three accredited gambling halls is the item at issue, maybe not quite the most earth-shaking article of information that we do not have.

What certainly is accurate, as it is of many of the old Russian nations, and absolutely correct of those located in Asia, is that there will be a good many more not approved and clandestine gambling dens. The adjustment to acceptable betting did not drive all the illegal casinos to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the contention over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a minor one at best: how many legal casinos is the item we are attempting to answer here.

We are aware that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly unique name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and video slots. We will additionally find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these have 26 slot machines and 11 gaming tables, divided between roulette, 21, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the square footage and layout of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it may be even more bizarre to see that the casinos share an address. This seems most bewildering, so we can clearly state that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the approved ones, ends at two casinos, one of them having adjusted their title a short time ago.

The country, in common with many of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a fast change to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you might say, to allude to the anarchical circumstances of the Wild West a century and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are in fact worth checking out, therefore, as a bit of anthropological analysis, to see cash being played as a type of collective one-upmanship, the aristocratic consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in nineteeth century America.