What's your opinion on the slack in this 318 timing chain?

I'm not "worrying" about it.

The timing cover has been cleaned up, the pitted backside surface around the coolant passages have been filled with JB weld and sanded smooth, paper felpro gaskets have been dressed with Permatex aviation goo (I would have used high tack but the store didn't have it). Also replaced the cover crank seal (it came with the felpro set). The cover and new water pump are on as of today, now I need to drive all the way across town to buy another can of red paint and paint everything back the way it was a week ago (but I need other paint also so that's ok, just a pain to mask everything when I had already painted it and looking good).

What I was looking for in this thread was along the lines of

"yes I put in a new chain set just last (week, month, year) and it had a little slack in it almost what you show in your photo, it's a crap shoot with the sets available today how much better any one of them will be compared to what you have now"

or

"yes when you put on a new chain set it should be tight as a drum and it won't matter if you buy Rockauto's $25 set or the $100 set I can tell you it will be tighter than what you show in your photo and your engine will run much smoother at idle".