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The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in a little doubt. As details from this state, out in the very most interior part of Central Asia, can be arduous to achieve, this might not be too astonishing. Regardless if there are 2 or three approved gambling halls is the thing at issue, perhaps not in fact the most consequential bit of information that we don’t have.

What certainly is true, as it is of most of the ex-USSR states, and absolutely true of those in Asia, is that there will be a good many more illegal and bootleg market casinos. The adjustment to approved wagering didn’t empower all the illegal casinos to come away from the dark and become legitimate. So, the debate over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a minor one at best: how many approved gambling dens is the element we are attempting to answer here.

We understand that located in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably unique name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and one armed bandits. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these have 26 slots and 11 table games, split between roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the sq.ft. and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more astonishing to find that they share an location. This seems most strange, so we can clearly determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the legal ones, ends at 2 casinos, 1 of them having altered their title a short time ago.

The country, in common with the majority of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a fast adjustment to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you may say, to reference the anarchical ways of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are in fact worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see money being played as a type of collective one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in 19th century America.