The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in a little doubt. As details from this nation, out in the very remote central part of Central Asia, can be arduous to achieve, this may not be all that astonishing. Whether there are two or three accredited gambling halls is the element at issue, perhaps not really the most earth-shaking slice of information that we don’t have.

What certainly is correct, as it is of many of the ex-Soviet nations, and certainly true of those located in Asia, is that there will be a good many more not approved and bootleg market gambling dens. The switch to acceptable betting did not encourage all the underground places to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the bickering over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a small one at most: how many authorized ones is the item we’re seeking to resolve here.

We know that in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously original name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and video slots. We will additionally see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these offer 26 slot machines and 11 gaming tables, divided between roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the square footage and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan casinos, it might be even more bizarre to see that they are at the same address. This appears most difficult to believe, so we can clearly conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the legal ones, is limited to 2 members, one of them having altered their title a short while ago.

The country, in common with the majority of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a fast change to commercialism. The Wild East, you might say, to refer to the lawless ways of the Wild West a century and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are actually worth going to, therefore, as a piece of anthropological analysis, to see cash being gambled as a type of collective one-upmanship, the aristocratic consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century usa.