I stopped doing the “pokey thing” and have had roughly the same number of breaks at before, maybe even less (one less point to fracture from without the hole). Subjective interpretation of the effectiveness is useless, as we humans are subject to so many possible bias that’s it’s impossible to be objective, no matter how hard we try. You can’t even eat enough eggs to have a statistically relevant sample size, let alone one large enough to determine if it does or doesn’t “help a little”.
You “feel” it helps. That’s ok. Also ok to act on. It’s just about boiling your own eggs.
I‘ve never had a single poked egg break. If I don’t they regularly do. That’s not statistically relevant, sure, but in my personal statistic it seems to work.
I wrote something about this in another comment just now, and while cracks in eggs with holes weren’t frequent, they still happened for me. I have been taught to poke holes in when I was young, and just always did and assumed it was needed. Now I stopped and nothing changed, basically. But it also means I have no point of comparison for how often they used to break without having poked holes, since I just never cooked them like that in the (distant) past.
There’s also no real downside to poking holes either, so why not if it might help. I have just misplaced my hole-poking-thingy anyway, so that saves some space in my drawer and not having to get a new one.
