The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in some dispute. As data from this country, out in the very most interior part of Central Asia, can be awkward to receive, this may not be too bizarre. Whether there are two or 3 legal gambling dens is the thing at issue, perhaps not quite the most all-important bit of data that we do not have.
What will be accurate, as it is of many of the ex-USSR nations, and definitely true of those in Asia, is that there will be many more not legal and underground gambling dens. The switch to authorized gaming didn’t encourage all the former casinos to come out of the dark into the light. So, the bickering over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a minor one at most: how many legal ones is the thing we’re trying to reconcile here.
We understand that located in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and one armed bandits. We can also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these offer 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, split amongst roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more surprising to see that both are at the same location. This appears most unlikely, so we can perhaps determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the authorized ones, is limited to two members, one of them having changed their title not long ago.
The country, in common with the majority of the ex-Soviet Union, has undergone something of a fast change to free-enterprise system. The Wild East, you may say, to reference the anarchical ways of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are in reality worth going to, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see cash being played as a type of social one-upmanship, the absolute consumption that Thorstein Veblen spoke about in 19th century America.