The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in some dispute. As details from this country, out in the very most central section of Central Asia, often is awkward to receive, this may not be all that astonishing. Whether there are two or three approved gambling halls is the thing at issue, maybe not quite the most consequential bit of info that we do not have.

What no doubt will be credible, as it is of the majority of the old Soviet states, and absolutely true of those located in Asia, is that there will be a great many more not allowed and bootleg market casinos. The adjustment to legalized betting didn’t drive all the former places to come away from the illegal into the legal. So, the contention regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a minor one at best: how many accredited casinos is the thing we are seeking to reconcile here.

We are aware that located in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slot machines. We will additionally find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these have 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, split between roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the size and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more astonishing to determine that they are at the same location. This seems most astonishing, so we can perhaps determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the legal ones, is limited to two casinos, one of them having altered their name a short while ago.

The state, in common with many of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a accelerated adjustment to capitalism. The Wild East, you may say, to refer to the anarchical circumstances of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are in fact worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see chips being played as a form of collective one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century u.s..