What site are we referring to?
Personally I prefer the sites that allow you to upload your own avatar (ie.
pokerstars,
partypoker). I always keep these visible as it doesn't affect my view of what is important to me on the tables (bets/chips, cards).
I like to keep my table looking as clean & slick as possible with as little added distractions as possible... but I prefer to keep avatars in place. My reasoning for this is... my brain tends to associate the player's avatar with their style of play that I've been witnessing over a period of time. I play quite a lot of Z00M(Stars), FastForward(Partypoker), SPEED(iPoker), SNAP(
888) tables & typically am 4-tabling them (sometimes 6-tabling if playing micro stakes). It's easier for my brain to recognize the player when I see their name & Avatar.. as opposed to just the name. It actually makes a HUGE difference for me.
There's also a bit of info. that can be extracted from some of them... ie. BBZ, or Pocar, etc. (staking stables). ... or you might see a 'Cardschat' logo and then you know you're in for a really tough challenge
On some of the other sites, I don't care for the avatars as they're just too big & distracting.
iPoker (Titan,
williamhill, etc.) has made some changes recently, making avatars larger and Cards (villain's unfolded cards) smaller. This just makes it more difficult to see the things that are most important (imo).
WPN (ACR, BlackChip, etc) - avatars are too large & distracting. Never appealed to me either.
888Poker - they don't seem too bad... But I find the tables there are not clean enough in appearance. Maybe it'd improve for me if I played on there more often.
Pokerstars - They've made the unfolded cards smaller while just slightly increasing the size of the avatar. Displayed bets also seem to have gotten a bit smaller. Still one of the best imo but I think I prefer Partypoker's appearance (strange to say this as for years Partypoker was terrible vs. the others).
Partypoker - recent changes have made the avatars Larger on Partypoker tables BUT it's very easy to keep the tables looking very clean (with few distractions) AND they've kept the 'unfolded' cards at a much larger size than most of the other sites. For myself this makes it so much easier if I'm playing many tables as I can quickly see how many players left to act, etc. etc.
I keep the avatars turned on at all sites but I try to turn off any of the extra crap (like throwing a beer at another player). I must admit, I do make Daniel Negreanu make some stupid faces/gestures on the GGPoker tables just because of how ridiculous it is. One I use most often "Running Hot"