Custom Chip Set Questions

[Jeff76]

Hello all. I am considering buying a custom poker chip set from www.pokerchips.com, but I'd like a little advice before I do.

First off, let me be clear about my goals. I want to have a fun, non-serious poker game for some friends of mine. These will be micro stake buy in tournaments for people who know little about poker, but don't mind paying $5 or $10 for an evening of fun.

I have been playing poker online for a little over a year (never in a live cardroom) and won a few bucks, but due to a change in schedule really don't have time to play consistently any more. However, I will be able to run a poker game every once in a while for my circle of friends, most of whom are really terrible at poker.

Obviously for this group I don't really need a killer chip set, but I'd like one anyway because that's just the kind of guy I am. Even if high quality chips and cards will be lost on this game, they won't be on me [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Besides, this will be a nice little reward to give myself for the money I was able to win online over the past year and a half.

I've run a couple of tournaments for this group with my current 600 piece composite chip set. It's always just a single table, so I have a pretty easy structure that starts with T400 and blinds of 1/2 and lasts about 4 hours. The reason for the T400 rather than something bigger is that using non-standard values for the colors weirds me out, and the biggest chip I have is $100. This is something I will change with the new chip set.

So here are my questions:
1. What kind of starting stack should I shoot for? I've been leaning toward T2000 with 5/10 blinds, but I'm also considering a more WSOP style T10,000 with 25/50 blinds. Honestly I'm plenty content with T400 and 1/2 blinds, but for some reason it seems to make some kind of difference to a lot of the players who like the idea of playing with big chip values. The benefit of playing T2000 stacks is that if I ever need to supplement my chips then I have a source in my current set (at least for the smaller values).

2. For the T2000 tournament, what do you think of these colors? (Yes, I realize the 1,000 chips are not really necessary, but I want a few anyway [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] )

$5- Red w/ Peach edge spots
$25- Dk Green w/ Lt Green edge spots
$100- Black w/ Yellow edge spots
$500- Purple w/ Pink edge spots
$1000- Yellow w/ Orange edge spots

If I go the T10,000 route I'd be looking at adding a $5,000 chip and dropping the $5 chip. I have no idea what color a $5,000 chip should be, though.

3. Should I get the values printed on the chips? I know the "home poker tourny" page says "no" because you might want to change the values later on, and that makes some sense to me. However, given that this group is fairly new to the game, it would be easier for them to see the values on the chips. Plus, I think it looks more "official" that way. OTOH, if I ever want to play a micro-stakes cash game with these chips it will be easier to make the $5 chips be $0.05 chips if there isn't a value printed on them. I don't see myself playing cash games, but you never know. Obviously if I DO decide to run a cash game at some point, I always have my current composite set to turn back to.

4. Since I get to put a custom design on the chip, anybody got any ideas? My last name is "Sylvester", which has led to my Stars name being "SlyJeff". I sort of like the idea of incorporating this into the chip design, say "Sly's Card Room" or "House of Sly", but the reality is that I'm hopelessly uncool and thus cannot seem to come up with a design idea that I'm confident I'll be proud of years from now.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about getting a nice set of chips, but this is no small amount of money so some external feedback on some of my choices would be appreciated.