“I’ve fantasized for decades about having a World Series stack imposing enough to make brutal sport of my opponents, but I have zero actual experience in the role. Do I feel any pressure? Of course not. I . . . pour out my baggie of chips, stack them by colour, recount them. Not that I think anyone would have stealthily siphoned a pink or an orange this morning, but still: $276,000, all present and accounted for. Does it make sense to say that one loves little towers of tinted clay chips? Did Grandma Betsy shit in the woods? . . .

At $15,000 per round, the average stack would be blinded off in about seven rounds. I have more leeway, of course, with my four yellow five-hundreds, fourteen blue-and-white thousands, twenty-four orange five-thousands, and fourteen hot pink ten-thousands. (And yes, I’m convinced of it: love is exactly the word.) The floormen have requested that we keep all our pinks to the fore, this is to give opponents a fair chance to measure with whom they want to tangle. Or not.”

—James McManus, from Positively Fifth Street, 2003.