[ English ]

The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in question. As data from this country, out in the very most interior section of Central Asia, can be hard to receive, this might not be all that difficult to believe. Whether there are 2 or three authorized gambling dens is the thing at issue, maybe not in fact the most earth-shattering piece of information that we do not have.

What will be true, as it is of many of the old USSR states, and definitely accurate of those in Asia, is that there certainly is a great many more not allowed and underground casinos. The adjustment to acceptable gaming didn’t energize all the former locations to come from the dark and become legitimate. So, the contention regarding the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a minor one at most: how many accredited gambling dens is the element we’re trying to answer here.

We know that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and one armed bandits. We can additionally find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these have 26 slot machines and 11 gaming tables, split amidst roulette, 21, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the sq.ft. and setup of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it may be even more astonishing to determine that they are at the same location. This seems most bewildering, so we can likely determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the authorized ones, stops at 2 members, one of them having altered their title a short while ago.

The nation, in common with almost all of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a rapid conversion to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you could say, to reference the lawless circumstances of the Wild West a century and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are almost certainly worth going to, therefore, as a bit of anthropological analysis, to see dollars being bet as a form of civil one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century u.s.a..