The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in question. As details from this nation, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, often is difficult to acquire, this might not be all that astonishing. Whether there are 2 or three approved gambling dens is the thing at issue, maybe not in reality the most consequential bit of data that we don’t have.
What will be true, as it is of the majority of the ex-Soviet nations, and absolutely true of those located in Asia, is that there certainly is many more illegal and bootleg market casinos. The adjustment to legalized betting did not drive all the underground places to come from the illegal into the legal. So, the controversy over the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a tiny one at best: how many accredited gambling halls is the element we’re trying to reconcile here.
We know that located 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 one armed bandits. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these contain 26 slot machines and 11 table games, split between roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the square footage and setup of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more astonishing to see that they are at the same location. This appears most unlikely, so we can no doubt state that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the authorized ones, stops at 2 casinos, 1 of them having changed their title not long ago.
The state, in common with nearly all of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a rapid conversion to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you could say, to reference the anarchical ways of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are certainly worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of social analysis, to see money being bet as a form of collective one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in 19th century us of a.
