[ English ]

The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As info from this state, out in the very most central section of Central Asia, often is hard to achieve, this may not be too difficult to believe. Whether there are two or 3 approved gambling halls is the item at issue, perhaps not really the most all-important article of data that we don’t have.

What certainly is correct, as it is of the lion’s share of the old Soviet states, and certainly correct of those in Asia, is that there no doubt will be many more not allowed and clandestine gambling dens. The change to acceptable gambling didn’t empower all the former places to come away from the dark into the light. So, the controversy over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a tiny one at most: how many authorized ones is the element we’re trying to reconcile here.

We are aware that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously unique title, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and video slots. We can additionally see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The two of these contain 26 one armed bandits and 11 gaming tables, divided between roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more astonishing to find that they are at the same location. This appears most bewildering, so we can perhaps conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the accredited ones, is limited to two members, one of them having altered their name not long ago.

The state, in common with most of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a fast conversion to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you may say, to allude to the anarchical ways of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are in fact worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see cash being wagered as a type of collective one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in nineteeth century u.s..