The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is something in some dispute. As information from this state, out in the very most interior part of Central Asia, can be difficult to acquire, this may not be all that difficult to believe. Regardless if there are two or 3 accredited gambling halls is the item at issue, perhaps not quite the most earth-shattering bit of data that we do not have.

What certainly is credible, as it is of the majority of the ex-USSR states, and certainly true of those in Asia, is that there certainly is a great many more illegal and bootleg market casinos. The adjustment to acceptable gaming did not encourage all the illegal locations to come out of the dark into the light. So, the debate over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a tiny one at best: how many authorized gambling dens is the element we’re trying to reconcile here.

We know that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slots. We can also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these contain 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, divided amongst roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan casinos, it might be even more astonishing to see that both share an location. This appears most strange, so we can perhaps determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the approved ones, is limited to 2 members, one of them having changed their title recently.

The country, in common with the majority of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a rapid change to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you may say, to allude to the chaotic ways of the Wild West a century and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are honestly worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see money being wagered as a form of communal one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century America.