The confirmed number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is something in a little doubt. As data from this country, out in the very most interior area of Central Asia, tends to be difficult to achieve, this might not be too bizarre. Whether there are two or 3 approved gambling dens is the element at issue, perhaps not really the most earth-shaking bit of info that we don’t have.
What certainly is true, as it is of the lion’s share of the ex-USSR nations, and definitely correct of those located in Asia, is that there will be a good many more not approved and alternative casinos. The change to legalized gaming did not drive all the former locations to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the bickering over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at best: how many accredited ones is the element we are trying to answer here.
We know that in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a stunningly original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and one armed bandits. We can also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these contain 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, split amidst roulette, blackjack, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the size and floor plan of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it may be even more surprising to see that the casinos share an address. This appears most difficult to believe, so we can perhaps state that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls, at least the approved ones, is limited to two members, 1 of them having adjusted their name recently.
The country, in common with almost all of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a accelerated conversion to capitalism. The Wild East, you could say, to allude to the lawless conditions of the Wild West a century and a half ago.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are almost certainly worth going to, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see dollars being gambled as a type of social one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century u.s..