Do I need to .acquire() or .transaction() when only fetching data in ASYNCPG?

This works:

db = await asyncpg.create_pool(**credentials, min_size=1, max_size=10)
pcount = await db.fetchval(query)
print(f'players: {pcount}')

But so does this

db = await asyncpg.create_pool(**credentials, min_size=1, max_size=10)
async with db.acquire() as con:
    async with con.transaction():
        pcount = await con.fetchval(query)
        print(f'players: {pcount}')
await db.release(con)

I am using a pooled connection with asyncpg python and I noticed that I can fetchrow just fine without having to do .acquire() a connection first. Which one is best practice, and should I acquire and transaction for everything or just database update/inserts?