The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is something in some dispute. As details from this country, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, can be hard to acquire, this might not be too bizarre. Regardless if there are 2 or three legal gambling halls is the item at issue, perhaps not quite the most all-important article of information that we don’t have.
What no doubt will be true, as it is of most of the ex-Soviet nations, and definitely true of those in Asia, is that there no doubt will be many more not allowed and backdoor gambling halls. The change to authorized wagering didn’t energize all the illegal locations to come from the dark into the light. So, the clash over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a tiny one at best: how many authorized casinos is the item we’re seeking to reconcile here.
We know that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (an amazingly unique name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and one armed bandits. We can additionally find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these contain 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, separated amidst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the size and setup of these two Kyrgyzstan casinos, it may be even more bizarre to find that they are at the same location. This appears most bewildering, so we can perhaps conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the approved ones, is limited to 2 casinos, 1 of them having changed their name recently.
The country, in common with practically all of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a rapid adjustment to commercialism. The Wild East, you may say, to allude to the chaotic circumstances of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are actually worth going to, therefore, as a piece of anthropological research, to see money being bet as a form of communal one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century usa.
