The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in a little doubt. As data from this country, out in the very remote central section of Central Asia, often is arduous to achieve, this may not be all that astonishing. Whether there are 2 or three accredited gambling dens is the element at issue, maybe not in reality the most earth-shaking piece of information that we don’t have.
What no doubt will be credible, as it is of most of the ex-Soviet states, and definitely accurate of those located in Asia, is that there certainly is a good many more not legal and bootleg market casinos. The adjustment to legalized gaming did not encourage all the former gambling halls to come from the illegal into the legal. So, the clash over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a minor one at most: how many authorized ones is the element we’re trying to resolve here.
We know that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and one armed bandits. We will also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these contain 26 video slots and 11 table games, divided between roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the square footage and layout of these two Kyrgyzstan casinos, it might be even more surprising to determine that they are at the same address. This seems most confounding, so we can no doubt conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the legal ones, is limited to 2 members, 1 of them having adjusted their name recently.
The nation, in common with many of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a accelerated adjustment to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you could say, to refer to the lawless ways of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are in reality worth going to, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see dollars being bet as a form of communal one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century usa.