# Noob question about Tournament without staking **URL:** \ **Category:** Tournament\ **Created:** [February 15, 2021, 8:50pm UTC](https://forum.numer.ai/t/noob-question-about-tournament-without-staking/1834 "2021-02-15T20:50:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![farside\_numerai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@farside\_numerai](https://forum.numer.ai/u/farside_numerai)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 8:50pm UTC](https://forum.numer.ai/t/noob-question-about-tournament-without-staking/1834/1 "2021-02-15T20:50:23Z")
Hi everyone!! Super excited to start the Numerai journey, looking forward to it. I have a few noob questions and thought it could be good to just concentrate them into one thread 1. Can you actually participate in the tournament without staking, just to continually check your strategies ? Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![wigglemuse](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex009/user_avatar/forum.numer.ai/wigglemuse/32/3094_2.png) [@wigglemuse](https://forum.numer.ai/u/wigglemuse)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 10:04pm UTC](https://forum.numer.ai/t/noob-question-about-tournament-without-staking/1834/2 "2021-02-15T22:04:34Z")
Welcome! Yes, you can. It is recommended to do so at first and when deploying a new model to see how it does on live data. ---
**Author:** ![farside\_numerai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@farside\_numerai](https://forum.numer.ai/u/farside_numerai)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2021, 8:44am UTC](https://forum.numer.ai/t/noob-question-about-tournament-without-staking/1834/3 "2021-02-16T08:44:20Z")
Thanks! That is awesome, already started doing some basic analysis. I am guessing I will take about 1-2 months of doing the tournament and then stake some NMR on it. Is there any preference on where to buy the NMR tokens ?