The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in question. As info from this country, out in the very remote central part of Central Asia, can be hard to receive, this may not be all that difficult to believe. Whether there are 2 or three approved gambling halls is the element at issue, maybe not really the most earth-shaking piece of data that we do not have.
What no doubt will be credible, as it is of the majority of the ex-Soviet nations, and certainly correct of those in Asia, is that there certainly is a good many more illegal and clandestine casinos. The change to authorized gaming did not drive all the underground locations to come out of the dark into the light. So, the bickering over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a tiny one at best: how many accredited gambling dens is the thing we’re seeking to answer here.
We know that located in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and video slots. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these offer 26 slot machine games and 11 table games, separated amongst roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the sq.ft. and layout of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more bizarre to find that the casinos are at the same address. This seems most astonishing, so we can perhaps conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the legal ones, ends at two members, 1 of them having changed their title a short time ago.
The country, in common with practically all of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a fast adjustment to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you may say, to allude to the lawless ways of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are honestly worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of anthropological analysis, to see money being wagered as a type of social one-upmanship, the aristocratic consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in 19th century u.s..