[ English ]

The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in question. As details from this state, out in the very remote central section of Central Asia, can be hard to achieve, this might not be too bizarre. Whether there are two or three authorized casinos is the element at issue, maybe not in reality the most earth-shaking article of data that we don’t have.

What no doubt will be correct, as it is of the majority of the ex-Soviet states, and certainly true of those located in Asia, is that there will be a great many more not legal and clandestine casinos. The adjustment to legalized wagering did not energize all the aforestated locations to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the controversy regarding the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at most: how many authorized casinos is the thing we are trying to resolve here.

We understand that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (an amazingly original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and video slots. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these contain 26 slots and 11 table games, divided between roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the square footage and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more surprising to find that both share an location. This seems most confounding, so we can perhaps conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the legal ones, is limited to 2 members, 1 of them having altered their title not long ago.

The state, in common with nearly all of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a fast adjustment to free market. The Wild East, you might say, to refer to the lawless ways of the Wild West a century and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are almost certainly worth checking out, therefore, as a piece of social analysis, to see dollars being gambled as a type of social one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in nineteeth century usa.