The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in question. As info from this state, out in the very remote interior area of Central Asia, can be awkward to acquire, this might not be too bizarre. Whether there are two or 3 approved casinos is the element at issue, maybe not quite the most earth-shaking bit of information that we don’t have.

What no doubt will be true, as it is of the majority of the old Soviet states, and absolutely accurate of those in Asia, is that there will be a great many more not legal and bootleg market casinos. The switch to approved gaming did not energize all the aforestated casinos to come out of the dark into the light. So, the bickering regarding the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens is a tiny one at best: how many approved ones is the element we’re trying to reconcile here.

We know that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slot machines. We will also find both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Both of these have 26 one armed bandits and 11 gaming tables, divided amidst roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the sq.ft. and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more surprising to find that the casinos are at the same location. This seems most bewildering, so we can no doubt determine that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the approved ones, stops at 2 members, one of them having changed their name not long ago.

The nation, in common with nearly all of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a fast change to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you could say, to reference the chaotic circumstances of the Wild West a century and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are actually worth checking out, therefore, as a piece of anthropological analysis, to see dollars being bet as a type of collective one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in nineteeth century America.