The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is something in some dispute. As information from this country, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, can be awkward to acquire, this might not be too surprising. Whether there are 2 or 3 legal gambling halls is the thing at issue, perhaps not quite the most all-important piece of information that we do not have.
What will be true, as it is of the majority of the old USSR states, and certainly correct of those in Asia, is that there will be a lot more illegal and bootleg market gambling dens. The change to authorized gambling didn’t drive all the aforestated locations to come from the dark and become legitimate. So, the debate regarding the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a small one at best: how many authorized ones is the item we are seeking to reconcile here.
We understand that located in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously unique title, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slots. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these have 26 one armed bandits and 11 gaming tables, separated amongst roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more astonishing to determine that both share an address. This seems most difficult to believe, so we can perhaps state that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the authorized ones, ends at two casinos, one of them having altered their name just a while ago.
The nation, in common with many of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a rapid conversion to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you might say, to reference the lawless conditions of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are certainly worth going to, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see chips being gambled as a form of collective one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in nineteeth century usa.