The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As info from this nation, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, tends to be hard to achieve, this may not be too surprising. Regardless if there are two or three approved casinos is the element at issue, perhaps not quite the most earth-shaking slice of info that we don’t have.
What no doubt will be accurate, as it is of most of the old Soviet states, and certainly truthful of those located in Asia, is that there will be many more illegal and underground gambling halls. The switch to legalized gambling didn’t encourage all the underground locations to come from the dark into the light. So, the bickering regarding the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at most: how many authorized gambling halls is the element we’re seeking to answer here.
We know that located in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly unique title, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slot machines. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these offer 26 video slots and 11 table games, separated amidst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the sq.ft. and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more bizarre to determine that the casinos are at the same address. This seems most bewildering, so we can no doubt determine that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the accredited ones, is limited to two casinos, one of them having altered their title just a while ago.
The state, in common with the majority of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a fast adjustment to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you might say, to reference the chaotic conditions of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are almost certainly worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see dollars being gambled as a form of communal one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in nineteeth century u.s..