I have put a space in front of the name of the contacts in my list of 400 contacts that I would like at the top of my list. It is almost like my speed dial list. So when I open up the phone dialer, I can push the contact ICON and my more frequent contacts are at the top of the list and I can easily select them. I hope this makes sense.
It's a couple extra steps, but pretty easy actually.
I have contacted blackberry tech support on this and they said it is a mistake in their software to only have 9 speed dials. She said they are working on new software to correct this but could not give me date of when this will happen.