The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As info from this country, out in the very most central part of Central Asia, tends to be difficult to get, this might not be all that surprising. Whether there are 2 or three approved gambling halls is the element at issue, maybe not quite the most earth-shattering bit of info that we don’t have.
What certainly is credible, as it is of many of the ex-Russian states, and definitely correct of those in Asia, is that there no doubt will be many more not approved and clandestine gambling dens. The switch to authorized wagering didn’t drive all the underground places to come away from the dark and become legitimate. So, the contention regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a minor one at best: how many authorized ones is the item we are trying to reconcile here.
We are aware that located in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (an amazingly original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and one armed bandits. We will also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these contain 26 slots and 11 table games, separated amidst roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the square footage and setup of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it may be even more astonishing to see that they are at the same address. This appears most astonishing, so we can perhaps determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the approved ones, ends at two members, one of them having adjusted their name a short time ago.
The country, in common with many of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a fast change to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you might say, to reference the lawless ways of the Wild West a century and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are actually worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see cash being gambled as a form of communal one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in nineteeth century America.
