Why I track my played board games

If you’re getting heavily invested in hobby board games, I’m sure at some point you’ve seen somebody talk about an “H-index.” It’s a term that you might look up, and you might be a little baffled. It’s a term used by professional scholars that basically refers to the number (H) of articles published that have been published at least that same number (H) times.

The term made its way over to board games — I believe — in about 2010 after a Finnish forum post referenced the concept. First, a user basically described the idea, just with a histogram:

I myself have sometimes measured something vague with an index that tells what the largest square is that can be fit into a histogram depicting your game count. In other words, what is the largest N such that you have played N different games each at least N times?

The conversation followed with a discussion of the H-index concept from an academic perspective, and I believe that’s sort of where it all stemmed from. It’s kind of wild, honestly, that we can track that back 16 years. A few clues peppered my journey: first, a May 2011 BGG post about the concept. That led me to a a December 2010 blog post by someone named Mikko (whose blog I actually like after stumbling on it during this research), which then led me to that Finnish forum. Interesting, right?

Anyway, H-index. The number of games you’ve played at least that same number of times. When I first started tracking games on BGG (first on the site, then via the ever-excellent BG Stats app), it caught my eye quickly. A number to track? Count me in. I was an experienced tracker-of-hobbies person, perhaps first with my Access database of Star Trek VHS tapes I’d recorded. I was somewhere between nine and 11 years old, so this was a particularly strange endeavor for a preteen. (I wanted to be able to find an episode quickly. I don’t think it helped, but it was my first real education about databases, and I fell in love with it.) In college, I tracked the movies I watched in a spreadsheet. (Thanks, Letterboxd. You’ve made my life much easier. Also, I watch fewer movies than when I was in college, so I guess that made my life somewhat easier, too.) I try to ensure my record collection is fully in Discogs, lest I accidentally buy a duplicate record yet again.

So it was that tracking my game plays was a natural fit, and so it became that my H-index became something I checked regularly. One of my friends has even kept up with it over the last six or seven years, which has added a nice, fun element to it. And now I can easily look back at the games I’ve played the most and reflect on what it is that’s helped me play them so many times.

The games at the top of the list are, almost without fail, games for which I’ve had a dedicated group, or they’re games that are reasonably light and easy to introduce to new players. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine (Sing, 2019), Hive (Yianni, 2001), Sky Team ([designer here]), and The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game (Bornmuller, 2025) are all in my top 15, and those are games that I’ve played pretty consistently with the same sets of people. It’s also why Anomia (Innes, 2010), Crisps (Bhat, 2025) and Carcassonne (Jurgen-Wrede, 2000)

Some games have fallen off the list: Pandemic Legacy, for one, naturally drops off the more games I play. I will always have the memories of playing, but they’re games I’m just not super likely to revisit any time soon. (I’d actually quite enjoy doing that, I think, but there are so many new games to play, too.) some below my H-index of 28 are games I played for a time with a group, and we collectively moved on to other games. Others are just really starting to enter into my sphere, like Teetering Treetops (Schiefelbein, 2024): games I’m playing with son, and I know we’ll move on from those at some point, too.

That’s part of why I track games. When I look through the games I’ve played, I see reflections of my life. I see my numerous plays of Coup (Tahta, 2012), which I last played in-person in 2017, and I think about the friends I spent the most time with from 2013 to 2017. I see my 2020 plays of The Crew and think about the evenings we spent in your tiny backyard with our friends playing the game on the little marble table that came with the place. The plays of Animal Upon Animal (Miltenberger, 2005) with my niece. The Crisps tournament at TTUTCON 2025 that I won. And there’s so much more in there, too. It’s not a replacement for my memories — it’s a way to help jog them and resurface them.

I’ve apparently now played over 1,000 unique games. I find that a little hard to believe, but I guess it really does add up. I’m pleased with my H-index, and I’m excited to see it grow — but I’m excited because it means I’ll be playing the games I’m enjoying more. I know I’ll play plenty of new games, but it turns out, when you play so many new games, you’ll find games you want to play again. And again. And, hopefully, again.

Thanks for joining me yet again. Do you track your games? I’ve enjoyed reflecting on why I do today, so thanks for reading to the end. I don’t really have a prize — I guess I did try a Coca Cola Plus today — it’s a Japanese Coke product with fiber. Is that an interesting enough anecdote to count as a prize? Ah, I suppose not. Sorry.