Lawrence Ho’s Tigre de Cristal casino held its soft-launch this week, the first casino in Russia’s Primorye gaming zone to open to the public.

The oft-delayed casino has missed many previous opening targets but over one thousand guests – including government officials, business types and those lucky enough to wrangle a special invite – attended Thursday’s soft launch ahead of the full opening scheduled for Nov. 12.

Following the VIP sneak peak, the doors were thrown open to the public. Over the next four hours, nearly 5k looky-loos stormed the gates and more than 9k customers have already signed up for Tigre de Cristal club cards.

Primorye, located 50km from the port city of Vladivostok on Russia’s east coast, is one of six official gaming zones in which Russian authorities allow casino gambling to take place. However, outside of properties in Krasnodar and Altai, there were no other active casinos until Tigre de Cristal opened. Konstantin Shestakov, director of the Primorsky region’s tourism department, said Tigre de Cristal was already “greater than all existing [Russian] casinos by volume.”