The conclusive number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As info from this state, out in the very remote interior part of Central Asia, tends to be hard to achieve, this may not be all that surprising. Whether there are 2 or three approved gambling dens is the element at issue, perhaps not in fact the most consequential bit of information that we don’t have.
What will be credible, as it is of many of the ex-USSR nations, and definitely correct of those located in Asia, is that there will be a great many more illegal and alternative casinos. The change to authorized gambling did not empower all the illegal places to come out of the illegal into the legal. So, the contention over the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos is a small one at most: how many approved ones is the element we’re trying to answer here.
We are aware that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a remarkably unique title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and video slots. We can also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. Each of these contain 26 slots and 11 table games, split amongst roulette, twenty-one, and poker. Given the amazing likeness in the square footage and layout of these two Kyrgyzstan casinos, it may be even more bizarre to find that the casinos share an address. This appears most difficult to believe, so we can likely state that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s casinos, at least the approved ones, is limited to two casinos, one of them having altered their name recently.
The state, in common with practically all of the ex-Soviet Union, has experienced something of a fast conversion to capitalistic system. The Wild East, you might say, to allude to the chaotic conditions of the Wild West a century and a half back.
Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls are almost certainly worth visiting, therefore, as a bit of social research, to see chips being bet as a form of social one-upmanship, the apparent consumption that Thorstein Veblen wrote about in nineteeth century America.