[ English ]

The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As data from this country, out in the very most central area of Central Asia, often is difficult to get, this might not be too surprising. Regardless if there are 2 or 3 legal gambling halls is the element at issue, perhaps not quite the most consequential slice of info that we don’t have.

What will be true, as it is of the majority of the old Russian states, and definitely correct of those located in Asia, is that there certainly is a good many more not approved and bootleg market gambling dens. The change to authorized gaming did not drive all the illegal places to come away from the dark and become legitimate. So, the debate regarding the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a minor one at most: how many authorized casinos is the thing we are attempting to reconcile here.

We are aware that located in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original title, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slot machines. We will also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these have 26 slot machine games and 11 table games, divided amidst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the sq.ft. and setup of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it might be even more astonishing to find that both are at the same address. This seems most confounding, so we can no doubt determine that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the legal ones, ends at 2 members, 1 of them having changed their title a short time ago.

The nation, in common with most of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a fast conversion to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you might say, to reference the lawless ways of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are certainly worth going to, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see money being gambled as a type of social one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in nineteeth century usa.