The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is a fact in a little doubt. As information from this nation, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, tends to be awkward to acquire, this might not be too difficult to believe. Whether there are 2 or three approved casinos is the element at issue, perhaps not quite the most consequential slice of data that we do not have.
What no doubt will be credible, as it is of many of the ex-Soviet states, and certainly accurate of those located in Asia, is that there will be a good many more not allowed and bootleg market gambling halls. The change to acceptable gaming did not drive all the illegal places to come out of the dark into the light. So, the contention over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a small one at most: how many approved gambling halls is the item we are trying to reconcile here.
We are aware that in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a stunningly 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 offer 26 slot machines and 11 table games, separated amidst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the sq.ft. and layout of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more bizarre to determine that they are at the same location. This appears most astonishing, so we can perhaps determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the authorized ones, is limited to two casinos, one of them having changed their title a short while ago.
The state, in common with many of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a fast change to capitalism. The Wild East, you could say, to refer to the chaotic ways of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are certainly worth going to, therefore, as a bit of anthropological analysis, to see dollars being played as a form of civil one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in nineteeth century us of a.