[ English ]

The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in question. As information from this state, out in the very most central part of Central Asia, can be awkward to get, this might not be too astonishing. Whether there are 2 or 3 legal gambling dens is the element at issue, perhaps not really the most earth-shattering article of information that we don’t have.

What no doubt will be correct, as it is of many of the ex-USSR states, and definitely accurate of those located in Asia, is that there will be a great many more not approved and alternative gambling dens. The switch to approved gambling did not encourage all the underground places to come away from the dark into the light. So, the contention regarding the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a minor one at most: how many legal ones is the element we’re trying to answer here.

We are aware that in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a stunningly original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slots. We can also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these offer 26 video slots and 11 table games, divided between roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the sq.ft. and layout of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it might be even more surprising to find that both are at the same location. This seems most bewildering, so we can no doubt determine that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the accredited ones, stops at 2 members, one of them having changed their title just a while ago.

The state, in common with almost all of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a accelerated conversion to free market. The Wild East, you could say, to allude to the anarchical circumstances of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are in fact worth going to, therefore, as a piece of anthropological analysis, to see chips being played as a form of collective one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century us of a.