The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in question. As information from this country, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, tends to be arduous to acquire, this might not be all that astonishing. Whether there are two or three accredited casinos is the thing at issue, maybe not in reality the most earth-shaking bit of information that we don’t have.
What will be credible, as it is of many of the old Russian nations, and definitely correct of those located in Asia, is that there no doubt will be many more not legal and alternative gambling halls. The change to legalized gaming did not energize all the former gambling halls to come out of the dark into the light. So, the debate over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a minor one at best: how many legal ones is the element we are attempting to reconcile here.
We understand that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a stunningly original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slots. We can additionally see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these have 26 one armed bandits and 11 table games, divided amidst roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the square footage and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan casinos, it may be even more astonishing to find that both are at the same address. This seems most unlikely, so we can clearly state that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the accredited ones, ends at 2 casinos, 1 of them having changed their title not long ago.
The state, in common with nearly all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a fast conversion to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you could say, to refer to the lawless circumstances of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are in fact worth going to, therefore, as a piece of social analysis, to see money being gambled as a type of civil one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century America.