You can flat out spend some money on rigs and everything else for a competition. I entered in 1 and spent about 600-700 bucks and only had a brinkman offset smoker. Got 4th in ribs and brisket out of over 30 teams. I had a few folks show me their rigs and OMG they were kewl. One guy had a pellet smoker and you could point to anywhere on his rig and he could tell you the temp inside the smoker at that point. Just really neat