Hi,
Firstly, welcome.
Secondly, Capt All In regularly runs bigger tournaments than I ever will, so if I disagree with him on anything, assume that I am wrong and he is right.
You are talking about giving out 17 chips each to start with - x 50 players = 850 chips, then assume 50 re-buys = another 500 chips since you say that re-buys are about the same as players, plus say another 50 for top ups.
That all adds up to maybe half of you total stack of chips.
Here's a different way of looking at it:
you have 1200 blue+white chips. give all of those out as initial buy in.
Call them T100, and give 20 to each player making T2000, then give then another 12 red chips each as T500, making T8000 total. Then give them 2 x T1000 chips (pick a colour). Now they have T10000, 34 chips each (much nicer).
Now, at the start of the game you have 1700 of your 2600 chips on the table.
Use the higher value chips for colour ups and rebuys as and when you need them.
You'll also need to change the first level SB to, say, 200 to cope with the fact that your smallest chip is 100.
It might take a little more thought, but in general, I think that would be a reasonable approach. Personally, I'd cut the T10k down to T1000 just to simplify the numbers, but if you really don't want to do that, it shouldn't make too much difference.
