[ English ]

The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is something in question. As data from this state, out in the very remote central section of Central Asia, often is hard to achieve, this may not be all that difficult to believe. Regardless if there are two or three authorized gambling halls is the element at issue, maybe not quite the most consequential slice of info that we do not have.

What no doubt will be true, as it is of many of the old Russian states, and certainly truthful of those located in Asia, is that there will be a good many more illegal and underground gambling dens. The adjustment to acceptable betting didn’t energize all the illegal gambling halls to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the controversy regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at most: how many accredited ones is the thing we are attempting to answer here.

We understand that located in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (an amazingly unique name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slot machines. We can additionally see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these have 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, divided amidst roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the sq.ft. and setup of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it might be even more astonishing to see that they share an location. This appears most astonishing, so we can no doubt conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the accredited ones, ends at 2 members, one of them having altered their name just a while ago.

The state, in common with practically all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a accelerated conversion to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you could say, to reference the anarchical conditions of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are certainly worth going to, therefore, as a bit of anthropological analysis, to see money being wagered as a form of social one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in nineteeth century usa.