[ English ]

The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in question. As information from this state, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, often is hard to get, this may not be all that astonishing. Regardless if there are 2 or 3 authorized gambling dens is the item at issue, perhaps not in reality the most all-important bit of information that we don’t have.

What will be true, as it is of most of the old USSR states, and absolutely truthful of those in Asia, is that there will be a good many more not allowed and alternative gambling halls. The switch to authorized gaming did not encourage all the illegal places to come from the dark into the light. So, the battle regarding the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a small one at best: how many authorized casinos is the item we’re seeking to answer here.

We are aware that located in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably unique name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and one armed bandits. We can also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The two of these contain 26 slot machines and 11 gaming tables, split amongst roulette, 21, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it may be even more bizarre to see that the casinos are at the same location. This seems most astonishing, so we can perhaps conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the legal ones, stops at two casinos, 1 of them having adjusted their name not long ago.

The country, in common with nearly all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a accelerated conversion to commercialism. The Wild East, you may say, to refer to the anarchical ways of the Wild West a century and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are actually worth going to, therefore, as a piece of social analysis, to see dollars being wagered as a form of communal one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century u.s.a..