Examples are disclosed herein that relate to determining a pose of a handheld object. One example provides a computing system configured to determine a pose of a handheld object comprising a plurality of light sources by acquiring image data of a surrounding environment, detecting a subset of light sources of the plurality of light sources of the handheld object in the image data, and performing a search, without using previous pose data, to determine the pose of the handheld object relative to the computing system. The computing system is further configured to use the pose determined to perform a later search for an updated pose of the handheld object, and if the later search fails to find the updated pose, determine the updated pose by again performing the search without using previous pose data.