Traditional Turkmen Games and Their Place in Gambling Industry

Gambling industry is not all about roulette, blackjack, and poker. Turkmenistan reveals how gambling can be influenced by traditions.

Turkmen gambling was heavily influenced by national traditions and sometimes even refer to struggle between classes and fight for independence. During the Soviet times, Turkmen games were heavily edited to be used in communist education of youth.

Most of the games in Turkmenistan were played collectively, teaching participants to respect one another, win and lose gracefully, as well as to be honest and provide assistance to fellow gamers. Some of the games had religious notes in them. During the game “Shaman”, children had to jump over fire to cleanse themselves from “evil spirits”.

Games and gambling in Turkmenistan

The current Turkmen gambling laws still allow gambling in the country, but there are already calls for outlawing the industry, and it may become totally banned very soon.

Over the years some of the national games have been transformed into real-money gambling in Turkmenistan. “Sunek-sunek”, or “dice”, is a game similar to Western craps. A pair of dice (with the sum of opposite faces equaling 7) is rolled and the upper face values are counted. In Turkmen is way simpler than craps, and the winner is the player that rolled the highest sum of two dice.

Craps is played in the casinos around the world and most online gambling destinations are also offering this game. Online casinos in Turkmenistan are not an exception, and local gamblers can still access a wide selection of foreign-based online casinos to play craps. However, should the new restrictive gambling law come into effect, real-money online casinos will also be outlawed in Turkmenistan.

The current trend reveals that “Sunek-sunek” is losing in popularity to other casino games in Turkmenistan. Poker seems to be the new favorite with more and more Turkmen people joining the land-based and online poker craze.