[ English ]

The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in a little doubt. As info from this state, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, often is difficult to achieve, this may not be all that astonishing. Regardless if there are two or 3 authorized gambling halls is the item at issue, maybe not in fact the most consequential article of info that we do not have.

What no doubt will be true, as it is of the majority of the old Russian states, and definitely accurate of those located in Asia, is that there will be a lot more not legal and backdoor casinos. The change to legalized gaming did not encourage all the aforestated locations to come out of the dark and become legitimate. So, the debate regarding the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a tiny one at best: how many legal ones is the element we are trying to resolve here.

We know that located in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slots. We can also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these contain 26 slots and 11 gaming tables, separated amidst roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it may be even more astonishing to determine that both are at the same location. This seems most confounding, so we can no doubt conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the authorized ones, ends at two casinos, one of them having altered their title a short time ago.

The country, in common with almost all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a fast change to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you may say, to reference the lawless conditions of the Wild West a century and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are certainly worth checking out, therefore, as a piece of anthropological analysis, to see money being bet as a form of collective one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century u.s..