Each player has 12 pieces (three large, three medium, three small, and three tiny). At the beginning, they are stacked on the sideboard in three stacks with the largest on top and the smallest on the bottom. The players alternate moving an exposed piece of their color from either their sideboard or from the middle 4×4 game board.

To play a game, you start a move by picking up a piece into your hand (lower-left and lower-right corners). Next you move that piece to a peg (the black circles) in the 4x4 center of the game board. In a legal move, you may move to any unoccupied peg or you may cover up any smaller piece, either yours or theirs. But beware if you do not remember what is underneath a piece when you pick it up, as you may give the opponent four in a row.

By default, the blue player is human and the red player is a computer, but you can choose to change either of them to human or computer.