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The actual number of Kyrgyzstan gambling dens is something in a little doubt. As information from this state, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, tends to be awkward to get, this might not be too bizarre. Regardless if there are 2 or 3 accredited casinos is the element at issue, maybe not in fact the most earth-shaking bit of information that we don’t have.

What certainly is true, as it is of most of the ex-Soviet nations, and absolutely correct of those located in Asia, is that there will be a lot more not approved and bootleg market casinos. The change to acceptable gambling did not drive all the aforestated places to come away from the dark into the light. So, the controversy regarding the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a minor one at most: how many approved ones is the item we are attempting to resolve here.

We know that located in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly original title, don’t you think?), which has both gaming tables and slots. We can additionally see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these contain 26 slots and 11 gaming tables, divided between roulette, 21, and poker. Given the remarkable similarity in the size and setup of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it may be even more astonishing to see that they are at the same address. This appears most bewildering, so we can clearly determine that the list of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the authorized ones, is limited to 2 members, 1 of them having changed their name just a while ago.

The country, in common with practically all of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a fast conversion to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you may say, to allude to the anarchical conditions of the Wild West an aeon and a half ago.

Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens are in fact worth going to, therefore, as a bit of anthropological analysis, to see money being bet as a type of collective one-upmanship, the celebrated consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in 19th century America.