The actual number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As information from this country, out in the very remote central section of Central Asia, can be difficult to acquire, this might not be too surprising. Regardless if there are 2 or three accredited gambling dens is the thing at issue, perhaps not in reality the most consequential piece of data that we do not have.

What no doubt will be true, as it is of the majority of the old Soviet nations, and certainly accurate of those in Asia, is that there no doubt will be a lot more not approved and backdoor gambling dens. The change to authorized wagering did not empower all the former locations to come away from the dark and become legitimate. So, the debate over the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at best: how many accredited gambling dens is the item we’re trying to answer here.

We understand that in Bishkek, the capital metropolis, there is the Casino Las Vegas (an amazingly unique name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slot machine games. We will also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these contain 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, split between roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the square footage and layout of these two Kyrgyzstan casinos, it might be even more surprising to see that the casinos share an location. This appears most unlikely, so we can likely conclude that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the approved ones, ends at two members, one of them having altered their name recently.

The state, in common with many of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a fast conversion to free market. The Wild East, you might say, to reference the anarchical circumstances of the Wild West a century and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are almost certainly worth going to, therefore, as a piece of anthropological analysis, to see dollars being wagered as a type of collective one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century usa.