The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As details from this state, out in the very most central area of Central Asia, often is hard to get, this might not be too astonishing. Whether there are 2 or 3 legal gambling dens is the item at issue, maybe not in fact the most earth-shaking bit of info that we do not have.

What will be accurate, as it is of many of the ex-Soviet states, and definitely accurate of those located in Asia, is that there certainly is many more not legal and underground casinos. The adjustment to acceptable gambling didn’t empower all the underground gambling dens to come out of the dark into the light. So, the debate over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a minor one at most: how many accredited gambling halls is the thing we are trying to answer here.

We know that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slots. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these contain 26 slots and 11 table games, divided between roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the size and layout of these two Kyrgyzstan casinos, it might be even more astonishing to find that they share an address. This appears most unlikely, so we can perhaps state that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the approved ones, is limited to two members, one of them having changed their title a short time ago.

The country, in common with almost all of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a accelerated change to free market. The Wild East, you may say, to reference the lawless ways of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are almost certainly worth checking out, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see money being gambled as a type of collective one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in nineteeth century usa.