The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is something in some dispute. As information from this state, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, tends to be awkward to receive, this may not be all that difficult to believe. Whether there are two or three authorized casinos is the element at issue, perhaps not quite the most earth-shattering piece of information that we don’t have.
What will be correct, as it is of the majority of the old Soviet nations, and absolutely truthful of those located in Asia, is that there certainly is a good many more not allowed and clandestine casinos. The adjustment to approved gaming didn’t drive all the underground locations to come out of the dark and become legitimate. So, the battle regarding the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a minor one at best: how many authorized ones is the thing we’re trying to reconcile here.
We are aware that located in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original title, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and video slots. We can additionally see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these contain 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, divided amongst roulette, chemin de fer, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the square footage and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more astonishing to see that the casinos are at the same location. This appears most bewildering, so we can no doubt state that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the approved ones, is limited to 2 members, one of them having changed their name not long ago.
The state, in common with nearly all of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a accelerated conversion to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you might say, to refer to the chaotic conditions of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are actually worth going to, therefore, as a piece of anthropological analysis, to see cash being gambled as a form of collective one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century America.