The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan gambling halls is a fact in some dispute. As information from this country, out in the very remote central section of Central Asia, often is arduous to receive, this may not be too difficult to believe. Whether there are 2 or three approved gambling halls is the thing at issue, perhaps not in fact the most earth-shattering bit of data that we do not have.

What certainly is correct, as it is of the majority of the ex-Soviet nations, and certainly truthful of those located in Asia, is that there will be a good many more not legal and clandestine casinos. The adjustment to authorized gaming didn’t empower all the illegal casinos to come away from the dark into the light. So, the controversy over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a small one at best: how many authorized casinos is the element we are attempting to reconcile here.

We understand that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously original title, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and one armed bandits. We can also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these have 26 video slots and 11 table games, divided between roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and layout of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more astonishing to see that both share an address. This appears most confounding, so we can no doubt state that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the authorized ones, ends at 2 casinos, one of them having changed their name just a while ago.

The state, in common with many of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a rapid adjustment to free market. The Wild East, you could say, to allude to the lawless ways of the Wild West a century and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are actually worth going to, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see chips being played as a form of collective one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in nineteeth century u.s..