The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is something in a little doubt. As details from this country, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, can be arduous to receive, this might not be all that astonishing. Regardless if there are 2 or three authorized gambling dens is the thing at issue, perhaps not quite the most all-important article of info that we don’t have.

What no doubt will be credible, as it is of the lion’s share of the old Soviet states, and certainly correct of those located in Asia, is that there will be a great many more illegal and backdoor gambling halls. The adjustment to approved betting did not drive all the underground gambling dens to come away from the illegal into the legal. So, the controversy over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at best: how many authorized ones is the thing we are trying to answer here.

We know that in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and one armed bandits. We can also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these contain 26 slots and 11 gaming tables, separated amidst roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the size and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan casinos, it might be even more surprising to see that the casinos are at the same address. This seems most difficult to believe, so we can clearly determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the accredited ones, stops at 2 casinos, one of them having adjusted their name recently.

The country, in common with most of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a accelerated adjustment to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you might say, to reference the lawless circumstances of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are honestly worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see money being bet as a type of civil one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in nineteeth century America.