Yesterday Rauan on the Kazakh version of our blog wrote that while all casinos have been closed in the cities, people in rural areas play cards for money bets. Perhaps, it’s really incredible and crying phenomenon in the traditional villages. But in the cities, illicit gambling is full speed ahead – and sometimes not too illicitly.

Ban on casinos was introduced on the Fool’s day, April 1, 2007, and has led to some changes in the city life. In Almaty the gambling machines have disappeared from food stores and kids, students and pensioners stopped spending their scarce money on them – which is, certainly, very good. The cabmen don’t get tired of complaining – now they have far less clients in the nighttime. Common people earlier used automats to change money – now they utilize vending machines with this purpose; by the way, vending machines business is booming these days. Companies that used to produce gambling automats now cooperate with the city administration and manufacture socially useful fast-payment terminals. Casinos are replaced with new cafes (by the way, the legendary – in Soviet times – Mirage café is now being reborn as Coffedelia) and stores.

Meanwhile, many people’s passion for gambling has not vanished after administrative decision of the government. It’s hard to accuse them – playing cards was not declared illegal whatsoever, and playing cards is not more sinful than playing billiards. Many Almatians have already seen how quiet cafes with separate rooms are visited by good-looking people with cards or a portable roulette. Now, smart guys, here are a couple of questions: should the owner of a café bear responsibility for hosting players? And the second one: whether we should expect a rise of criminal statistics soon – you know, gambling in a cozy company can raise some questions to the croupier, who doesn’t formally belong to casino?