COLOR UP

Rammer Jammer posted a question this morning on chip values throughout a tournement. Do they retain the same value at all levels or do they increase in value as the blinds increase? I responded with my typical off the cuff, uninformed opinion. Here is the informed one, and please, anyone with live tournament experience is welcome to chime in.
There is a procedure in tournament play refered to as "coloring up", in which the lowest denomination of chips is removed from the table. Each player will exchange all there lowest denomination of chips for the next color up. Five $5 chips would be exchanged directly for 1 $25 chip. Odd chips are exchanged in what is called a "Chip Race". In a clockwise rotation, each player is dealt a number of cards equal to their number of odd chips. No player involved will recieve any cards until the player to his right has received all the cards they are due. The dealer then collects all the odd chips and exchanges them for the higher valued chips. If any chips remain after that, then the number is rounded up or down. The players involved in the chip race are then alloted the higher valued chips according to the highest to lowest ranked cards showing. This is the only place where suit ranking is applied in hold 'em. If two cards of equal value are showing, say aces, the chip will go to the ace of the higher rank. The order of rank appears to be SHCD. No player will receive more than one chip, and no player can be eliminated from play due to a chip race.
These are the official Tournament rules. In home games, and small tournaments, the chip race is often bypassed. After coloring up, each player is allowed to retain there odd chips which will be colored up as soon as enough have been accumulated from eliminated players. Keep in mind, that in neither case do the original chip values change.
Sorry 'Jammer. This is why I added the signature.

yea. some tourneys do that

But i think its stupid. you need lower denomonation chips.

you just can thave big chips..

I think that rule also applies for home game tourneys also

think about tourneys like wsop
final table players end up having 100s of thousands in chips (value-wise)
if they were to keep the 5-point chips from the beginning of the tourney, they'd fill up half the table
thats why they end up using something like 100-point and 500-point chips in the end