[
English ]
The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As information from this nation, out in the very most central section of Central Asia, tends to be hard to acquire, this may not be too difficult to believe. Regardless if there are 2 or 3 approved gambling dens is the item at issue, perhaps not quite the most earth-shattering piece of info that we do not have.
What no doubt will be true, as it is of many of the ex-Soviet states, and definitely true of those located in Asia, is that there no doubt will be many more illegal and clandestine casinos. The switch to approved gambling didn’t drive all the former gambling dens to come away from the dark and become legitimate. So, the clash regarding the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a small one at best: how many accredited gambling dens is the thing we are attempting to reconcile here.
We understand 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 will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these contain 26 one armed bandits and 11 gaming tables, separated between roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the square footage and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan casinos, it may be even more bizarre to see that the casinos are at the same location. This appears most bewildering, so we can perhaps conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the legal ones, ends at two members, one of them having altered their name not long ago.
The state, in common with nearly all of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a accelerated conversion to commercialism. The Wild East, you could say, to allude to the lawless circumstances of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are honestly worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see money being wagered as a form of communal one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century u.s..