The complete number of Kyrgyzstan casinos is a fact in some dispute. As data from this country, out in the very remote central area of Central Asia, tends to be hard to get, this may not be all that bizarre. Whether there are two or three approved gambling halls is the item at issue, maybe not really the most earth-shattering piece of info that we don’t have.

What will be correct, as it is of many of the ex-USSR states, and absolutely true of those in Asia, is that there will be many more not approved and clandestine gambling dens. The adjustment to approved gambling didn’t encourage all the underground locations to come away from the dark into the light. So, the bickering over the total number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling halls is a small one at best: how many accredited ones is the thing we are trying to reconcile here.

We understand that in Bishkek, the capital city, there is the Casino Las Vegas (a spectacularly original title, don’t you think?), which has both table games and slot machines. We will also see both the Casino Bishkek and the Xanadu Casino. The pair of these contain 26 slots and 11 gaming tables, divided amidst roulette, vingt-et-un, and poker. Given the amazing similarity in the sq.ft. and setup of these two Kyrgyzstan gambling dens, it might be even more astonishing to find that they are at the same location. This seems most unlikely, so we can no doubt determine that the number of Kyrgyzstan’s gambling dens, at least the legal ones, ends at 2 members, 1 of them having changed their name not long ago.

The nation, in common with the majority of the ex-USSR, has undergone something of a rapid change to free-enterprise economy. The Wild East, you might say, to allude to the lawless conditions of the Wild West an aeon and a half back.

Kyrgyzstan’s casinos are almost certainly worth visiting, therefore, as a piece of social research, to see chips being wagered as a type of communal one-upmanship, the conspicuous consumption that Thorstein Veblen talked about in nineteeth century u.s..