Ross, you're pretty close. Fact is:

In some card rooms, an accurate count is taken when the chips are raced off for the higher denominations. The tournament directors want to make sure no one is obsconding with any chips.

The reason for this is so that no one can insert chips "from the outside" into the game. In other words, a person could save chips from a prior tournament and reinsert them into another game at a later time.

If one gets caught doing this, he not only will be disqualified from the current tournament but barred from playing in any future tournaments.

For this reason alone, it behoves a person from harvesting tournament chips. But on top of that and even more important, his reputation is ruined.

Now let's take this one step further.

True, that the obsconding of these low denomination chips (the red ones in this particular case) are not going to make one heck of a difference in the ultimate outcome of the tournament, but I'd sure hate to get caught palming them. In the later part of the tournament when the tables are whittling down to the last few, then this becomes very important.

Now then, the only "safe" way to harvest these low denomination chips are to do it when and only when a player (or preferably two) are knocked out early or if a player is moved to another table--preferably you. Then you can get the chips and feel safe. But do this often enough and a sharp director will catch on quickly--especially if he knows you are a chip collector.

Now, not all card rooms scrutinize these chips that closely, but for the ones that do--be careful. In our area, the Lucky Derby does not watch their chips at all--never counts them and bundles them all up together. They have no idea what is going on. The big problem here, however, is that these chips are all generic which is why I never showed them tho anyone on the board. Cache Creek, on the other hand, just got a new tournament director and with new chips, I'm being very cautious.

In a recent tournament held at San Pablo, a man in a wheelchair was moved to another table. He was not given a rack so he put the chips in his lap and moved. He was disqualified from the tournament for taking chips off the table. Purely an innocent movement but those are the rules.

That is your answer.