[The Mind Reader]

Hey gang,

Here's the chip breakdown that my friends and I currently play with using either my set of 400 dice chips or my friend's set of 400 dice chips:

NLHE tournament, $1,000 starting stack:

16 x $10 (white)
12 x $20 (red)
6 x $50 (blue)
3 x $100 (black)

I think this stinks for several reasons, mainly the crappy chips, odd denoms, and the fact that it only accomdates 10 players before some people have to start with different stacks than others (since we only have 400 chips).

Anyway, I recently bought a crap load of faux clay's and want to build a nice 500 chip set for future tourneys, using better denoms and being able to accomodate more players hopefully too.

So I was thinking about sticking with $1,000 starting stacks, but going this route:

20 x $5 (blue)
16 x $25 (green)
5 x $100 (black)

That would require 410 chips for 10 players (200 blues, 160 greens, 50 blacks). So there's room in the case for 90 more chips, but I can't figure out what to do with that room yet.

So my questions, I guess, are:

1> Is it normal to start with 3 denoms in you guys' home game tourneys? Or do you start with 4?

2> How to accomodate more than 10 players? I have 3 ideas of how to do this:

a> Just fill the rest of the case with blacks, and have the starting stacks be slightly different from player to player for times when there's more than 10 players (so the 500 chip set would be 200x$5, 160x$25, 140x$100 for $19,000 total)

b> Make sure I have enough chips on hand to give everyone the same starting stack, which would require 615 chips for 15 players using the starting stacks laid out above (300 blues, 240 greens, 75 blacks). I'd keep 500 chips in the case and leave 115 chips somewhere else and only grab them when I need them. (So I'd have $15,000 in chips total)

c> Change my starting stack breakdown, so that I can fit 15 player's worth of starting stacks into a 500 chip case

Thanks a lot for any advice you might be able to give me on these matters!

Oh yes, I was also thinking about having a higher denom - purples valued at $500, that I'd only need for color ups at the end of huge tournaments. Is this a good idea or should I just keep things simple?