[ English ]

The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is something in a little doubt. As data from this state, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, often is difficult to receive, this might not be all that surprising. Regardless if there are 2 or 3 legal casinos is the item at issue, perhaps not in fact the most all-important slice of information that we do not have.

What certainly is credible, as it is of most of the old USSR states, and definitely true of those located in Asia, is that there certainly is a good many more not approved and alternative gambling dens. The switch to acceptable gaming did not empower all the former locations to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the clash regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a small one at best: how many authorized ones is the element we are trying to answer here.

We understand that located in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously 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. The pair of these have 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, divided amidst roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the sq.ft. and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it may be even more astonishing to determine that both are at the same address. This seems most strange, so we can perhaps state that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the legal ones, ends at 2 members, 1 of them having changed their name a short while ago.

The country, in common with practically all of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a accelerated adjustment to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you may say, to allude to the chaotic circumstances of the Wild West a century and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are actually worth checking out, therefore, as a bit of anthropological analysis, to see cash being wagered as a type of collective one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century America.