The complete number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As data from this state, out in the very remote interior area of Central Asia, often is hard to achieve, this may not be too difficult to believe. Regardless if there are 2 or 3 approved gambling dens is the thing at issue, maybe not really the most consequential bit of information that we don’t have.

What no doubt will be true, as it is of the majority of the ex-Soviet states, and definitely correct of those in Asia, is that there certainly is many more not allowed and backdoor casinos. The change to legalized betting didn’t drive all the aforestated places to come away from the illegal into the legal. So, the clash over the total amount of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a small one at best: how many authorized ones is the item we’re trying to reconcile here.

We are aware that located in Bishkek, the capital municipality, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a marvelously original name, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slot machines. We can also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The two of these offer 26 one armed bandits and 11 gaming tables, separated amongst roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the size and layout of these 2 Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it might be even more astonishing to see that both are at the same address. This appears most bewildering, so we can clearly conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the accredited ones, is limited to 2 casinos, 1 of them having adjusted their name just a while ago.

The country, in common with nearly all of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a accelerated conversion to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you may say, to refer to the chaotic circumstances of the Wild West a century and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are in reality worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of social analysis, to see money being played as a form of civil one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century America.