The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in a little doubt. As information from this nation, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, tends to be awkward to achieve, this may not be all that astonishing. Whether there are two or three legal gambling dens is the thing at issue, perhaps not really the most earth-shaking bit of information that we don’t have.

What certainly is credible, as it is of many of the ex-Russian states, and absolutely truthful of those located in Asia, is that there will be many more not approved and backdoor gambling dens. The adjustment to approved betting did not empower all the illegal locations to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the clash over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a minor one at best: how many approved casinos is the item we’re seeking to reconcile here.

We know that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously unique name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slots. We can also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these offer 26 slots and 11 gaming tables, separated amongst roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the square footage and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it may be even more astonishing to find that they are at the same address. This appears most bewildering, so we can likely determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the accredited ones, ends at two members, one of them having adjusted their name not long ago.

The state, in common with almost all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a rapid adjustment to capitalism. The Wild East, you might say, to reference the chaotic circumstances of the Wild West a century and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are certainly worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of anthropological analysis, to see chips being bet as a form of communal one-upmanship, the aristocratic consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century us of a.