Personally, I prefer playing with the big blinds in sight rather than counting chips, especially in tournaments.
For many years, I played focusing solely on the number of chips in my stack. The problem was that I often made decisions based on the number of chips themselves, rather than their actual value in relation to the blinds. Looking back, I realize that I sometimes made overly aggressive plays without properly considering the depth of my stack or how much of my participation in the tournament I was risking.
When I started playing at GGPoker, I discovered the option of displaying stacks of chips in large blinds, and that completely changed the way I thought about the game. It became much easier to evaluate situations, understand my effective stack size, and make better decisions about raises, equalizers and all-ins. Instead of thinking, “I have 20,000 chips,” I started thinking, “I have 25 big blinds,” which is much more useful from a strategic perspective.
Since making that change, I feel that my tournament decisions have become more disciplined and consistent. That's why I highly recommend showing the chips in big blinds to anyone who wants to improve their game in tournaments. Chip counting can still be useful, especially in
real money games or to play for fun, but for serious tournament poker, I think big blinds provide a much clearer view of the situation and help players make better decisions.