[ English ]

The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is a fact in question. As data from this nation, out in the very remote central part of Central Asia, often is arduous to receive, this might not be all that astonishing. Whether there are 2 or 3 accredited gambling dens is the element at issue, perhaps not in reality the most consequential bit of information that we do not have.

What no doubt will be accurate, as it is of the lion’s share of the old Russian states, and certainly accurate of those located in Asia, is that there no doubt will be a lot more not legal and alternative gambling dens. The switch to authorized betting didn’t energize all the underground casinos to come from the illegal into the legal. So, the contention regarding the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a tiny one at most: how many approved ones is the element we’re trying to reconcile here.

We understand that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (an amazingly unique title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slot machines. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these contain 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, split between roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the sq.ft. and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more surprising to determine that both are at the same address. This appears most strange, so we can clearly conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the authorized ones, stops at two members, one of them having altered their name just a while ago.

The country, in common with almost all of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a accelerated adjustment to commercialism. The Wild East, you may say, to refer to the lawless conditions of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are almost certainly worth going to, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see dollars being bet as a form of communal one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century u.s.a..