Poker Chips
If you already have a set of poker chips, great. If not, the kind you should get depends upon the type of game you will be hosting. Poker chips range in quality, from plastic chips you can find at a local department store, to casino quality clay chips.
If you plan to invite people over to play, it is probably worth spending a few dollars up front and getting clay chips. They vary in weight, with 11.5 grams feeling best to me. Although, since I decided to have my chips marked for security puposes (read: so there's no fear of someone sneaking in an extra black chip or two to add to their stack on the sly), I "bought down" a bit and picked up some 8g chips. They do just fine.
A quick note about chips is that chips with denominations aren't as flexible as non-denomination chips. I picked up a nice set of 11.5 grams with what I think are stunning graphics. But, with the denominations marked already, and all of the regular tournament players having their minds accustomed to starting with 800 or 1,000 chips, my new set only really serves for cash games.
As for how many chips to get, I have a set of 1500, and we've run 40+ person tournaments without incident. For insightful recommendations on chip totals and color schemes, I recommend this poker chips page by nutn2lewz, webmaster of HomePokerTourney.com.
We start tournaments with each player receiving 800 in chips if the tables are full, which in our case is 8 players. When we run events that start with shorter tables (6 or 7 man), we pad everyone's starting stack with a couple of extra hundreds so the blinds don't come into play as quickly. In those cases everyone starts with 1,000 in chips.
I have a couple of blind schedules posted on the site, and you can start with 800 or 1,000 chips, whichever you'd prefer. I have friends that regularly play high action games where each player starts with 4,000 in chips. The blinds are just set accordingly.
Coloring Up
There will come a point in the later rounds when you will no longer have use for the smallest denomination chip. The blinds will be $150 and $300, and someone will be trying to push in 60 red chips towards their blind.
The way around that situation is to have a large value chip in the racks, and have players cash smaller chips in for larger ones. We even have purple chips in the rack that are worth $500, and can use them to clean up the $100's off the tables after the tournament progresses to it's end stage.
Once the smallest chips are no longer needed for blinds, we "color up", and cash in the small chips for larger ones. If each player has an even amount of chips to cash in, fantastic. If there would be "change", (for example I have three 5's, and we are moving up to where 25's are the lowest chip on the tables), this needs to be taken care of.
One simple solution is to simply have a few of the smallest chips floating around until one player gathers enough to cash them in. Another solution is the . . .
Chip Race
This is a task we put into each game at the beginning of the final table, and we use it as an automatic bathroom and beverages break. It may not fit as nicely into your situation as it does in ours. For us it's a ritual, it is the first thing the players who make the final table do. It's also a way for each of us to get a understanding of each other's chip stacks, but I digress . . .
In a chip race, the dealer first cashes in all of the small chips at the table possible. He then counts the outstanding amount of small chips. He then rounds that number to the appropriate amount of the new smallest chip at the table. Say you are moving from $5 chips to $25 chips, and there are eight $5's left. The dealer rounds $40 (eight $5 chips) up to $50, and sets two $25 chips aside for the race. If there would have been seven $5's left, the dealer would have rounded $35 down to $25, and set one chip aside. (Ideally no rounding should be necessary).
Each player with a "left over" small chip is dealt one card per chip. So, if:
Player A has four $5 chips left, he gets four cards
Player B has no $5 chips remaining. He gets no cards dealt to him.
Player C has two $5 chips left, he gets two cards.
Player D has four $5 chips left, he gets four cards
The two highest rankings cards receive a $25 chip each. It's that simple. (Tied ranks go by suits, spades, hearts, diamonds then clubs to break ties - that's reverse alphabetical order).
One very important thing to note, a player can not be eliminated from a tournament by a chip race. If that player were to participate in the chip raise and lose, the last chip awarded would go to them automatically.
