The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is a fact in question. As data from this state, out in the very most central part of Central Asia, often is arduous to get, this may not be all that astonishing. Whether there are 2 or three authorized gambling dens is the element at issue, perhaps not really the most earth-shattering slice 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 absolutely true of those in Asia, is that there will be many more not allowed and alternative gambling dens. The change to authorized gaming didn’t empower all the underground locations to come away from the dark into the light. So, the controversy regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at most: how many authorized gambling dens is the thing we are trying to reconcile here.

We are aware that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly unique 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 pair of these offer 26 slot machine games and 11 gaming tables, split amongst roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and floor plan of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling halls, it might be even more bizarre to determine that the casinos are at the same address. This appears most confounding, so we can clearly conclude that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the accredited ones, is limited to 2 members, one of them having changed their title a short time ago.

The country, in common with most of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a fast change to capitalism. The Wild East, you could say, to reference the lawless circumstances of the Wild West a century and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are in fact worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of anthropological research, to see chips being bet as a form of communal one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in nineteeth century u.s..