The complete number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As data from this nation, out in the very most central area of Central Asia, can be arduous to acquire, this may not be all that difficult to believe. Whether there are 2 or three legal gambling dens is the item at issue, maybe not quite the most earth-shaking bit of information that we don’t have.
What will be true, as it is of the majority of the old USSR nations, and definitely correct of those in Asia, is that there will be a great many more not legal and underground gambling halls. The change to legalized wagering didn’t drive all the underground locations to come away from the dark and become legitimate. So, the battle regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a small one at most: how many accredited gambling dens is the item we are seeking to reconcile here.
We know that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slot machines. We can also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The two of these contain 26 slot machine games and 11 table games, divided amongst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the square footage and setup of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more astonishing to find that both share an address. This seems most bewildering, so we can clearly conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the accredited ones, ends at 2 members, one of them having changed their name not long ago.
The country, in common with almost all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a accelerated conversion to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you could say, to refer to the anarchical conditions of the Wild West a century and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are certainly worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see chips being played as a form of social one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in nineteeth century usa.