[ English ]

The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is a fact in some dispute. As information from this country, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, can be arduous to achieve, this might not be all that bizarre. Regardless if there are two or 3 legal casinos is the item at issue, maybe not really the most consequential slice of information that we do not have.

What will be correct, as it is of the majority of the old Soviet nations, and certainly accurate of those in Asia, is that there certainly is many more illegal and clandestine casinos. The adjustment to approved wagering did not encourage all the former locations to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the debate over the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a tiny one at most: how many legal ones is the item we are trying to resolve here.

We know that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and one armed bandits. We will also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these offer 26 one armed bandits and 11 gaming tables, divided amidst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the sq.ft. and layout of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more surprising to find that both share an address. This seems most strange, so we can perhaps conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the approved ones, is limited to 2 casinos, one of them having altered their name just a while ago.

The nation, in common with most of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a rapid adjustment to commercialism. The Wild East, you may say, to refer to the anarchical ways of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are in reality worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of social research, to see dollars being wagered as a type of collective one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in 19th century us of a.