North Korean, South Korean and northern Chinese punters will relatively soon have at least two opportunities to take short-hop flights to Vladivostok, where two casinos — relatively modest in 
budget by American standards — are in progress. The junior of the two is NagaCorp, which is in the first of three phases of what will be a $150 million to $200 million casino, with 100 tables and 500 slots. It’s part of Primorsky Entertainment Resort City, in which NagaCorp is being beaten to the finish line by Lawrence Ho. His $700 million Tigre de Cristal casino should be open by September — four months behind schedule — and will feature 65 tables (divided between VIP and mass-market play), 800 slots and 119 hotel rooms. But if Ho’s running behind schedule, NagaCorp’s just getting started.
Since Nagacorp’s budget has been scaled back from $369 million, it makes you wonder how well a contemplated public offering went. “What we’re not going to do is a Wynn– or Sands-style opening like in Macao where there’s a grand opening. We’re going to try and build the complex, get the gaming facility and hotel open and then keep adding on until we complete our vision and our master plan,” said CEO Tim McNally of the Paul Steelman-designed casino.
* Add Trump International on the Las Vegas Strip to a long (and costly) list of credit-card data breaches at Trump-branded properties. Trump isn’t the only hotel chain with a Vegas presence to feel the bite of cyber thieves: Mandarin Oriental has also been sapped.
* New York racinos are upping their slot inventory and adding electronic blackjack, among other preemptive moves, to deflect upcoming competition from 2017’s wave of new casinos. The Oneida Indians have launched a slot route and the arms race could encroach upon the New York City market, with Yonkers Raceway looking to add mechanical versions of 21 and three-card poker. For racinos, there’s a two-year window in which to make hay while the sun shines, until the new casinos introduce table games and tilt the balance of power.
* Add the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe to the groups in Massachusetts resolved to proceed with casino construction. The Wampanoag seek a Class II casino on Martha’s Vineyard, although getting it means unraveling a skein of contradictory federal rulings. In 1987, a law was passed by Congress, placing the land in question under 
Bay State laws, “including those … regulations which prohibit or regulate the conduct of bingo or any other game of chance.”
The tribe contends that this was made null and void by the following year’s passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. It also claims that it has the opinion of the National Indian Gaming Commission on its side, but must argue away a Clinton administration Interior Department ruling that the Wampanoag could only pursue a casino elsewhere, not on Martha’s Vineyard. The tribe will shortly be butting heads in court over the state’s contention that the tribe traded away gaming rights for its 455 acres. Even if the Wampanoag win that suit, they still have to contend with litigation from both the town of Aquinnah itself and from a community association. You have to hand it to the tribe: They’re persistent in the face of exceptional discouragement.
