[ English ]

The complete number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in some dispute. As information from this state, out in the very most central part of Central Asia, tends to be difficult to receive, this might not be all that surprising. Regardless if there are two or three authorized casinos is the thing at issue, maybe not in reality the most consequential piece of info that we do not have.

What no doubt will be true, as it is of many of the old USSR nations, and absolutely accurate of those located in Asia, is that there certainly is many more not legal and backdoor gambling halls. The adjustment to authorized gaming didn’t empower all the former places to come from the illegal into the legal. So, the clash over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a small one at best: how many approved casinos is the element we are trying to resolve here.

We know that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously original title, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and one armed bandits. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these contain 26 slot machines and 11 gaming tables, split between roulette, 21, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the sq.ft. and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more surprising to see that both are at the same address. This seems most confounding, so we can no doubt conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the accredited ones, is limited to 2 casinos, 1 of them having altered their name just a while ago.

The nation, in common with practically all of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a accelerated adjustment to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you might say, to refer to the lawless ways of the Wild West a century and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are actually worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of social analysis, to see cash being wagered as a type of social one-upmanship, the aristocratic consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in nineteeth century us of a.