The complete number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is something in some dispute. As data from this state, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, tends to be arduous to achieve, this might not be all that difficult to believe. Whether there are 2 or 3 authorized gambling dens is the element at issue, maybe not quite the most all-important slice of info that we don’t have.

What will be true, as it is of the majority of the old USSR states, and absolutely accurate of those located in Asia, is that there certainly is a good many more not approved and backdoor gambling dens. The adjustment to legalized gaming didn’t encourage all the former gambling dens to come out of the dark and become legitimate. So, the battle regarding the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a small one at best: how many approved gambling dens is the thing we’re attempting to answer here.

We understand that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (an amazingly original name, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slots. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these have 26 slot machines and 11 gaming tables, divided between roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the remarkable likeness in the square footage and layout of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it might be even more bizarre to determine that both are at the same location. This appears most difficult to believe, so we can perhaps conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the legal ones, ends at 2 members, one of them having adjusted their name a short time ago.

The nation, in common with the majority of the ex-USSR, has experienced something of a fast adjustment to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you could say, to allude to the anarchical circumstances of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are certainly worth checking out, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see cash being bet as a type of civil one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in 19th century America.