The game is played on a grid of squared paper, and each player has a pen of a different colour. The players take turns in drawing a dot of their own colour on an empty intersection.

Enclosures

Each player aims to make 'enclosures', surrounding their opponent's dots by a continuous chain of their own dots. To form a chain, the player's dots must be adjacent to each other vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, and the enclosure must contain at least one of the opponent's dots.

Once a player makes an enclosure they draw a line through the chain, and optionally shade over the area it encloses. No further plays can be made inside the enclosure, and at the end of the game they will score a point for each of the opponent's dots it encloses.

Ending

A player says "Pass" if they have no useful moves to make. When both players have passed the game ends, and the winner is the one who has captured the most dots of their opponent.

Houses

If a player makes a continuous chain that doesn't enclose any of their opponent's dots it doesn't become an enclosure, but is called a "house".

However, if the opponent subsequently plays a dot inside the house, and that dot doesn't itself immediately create an enclosure, then the house becomes an enclosure and the owner can draw in the chain around it.

Enclosing enclosures

If a player makes a chain that surrounds one of their opponent's enclosures, their pieces in the inner enclosure are liberated and will not count towards the final score.

In the following game Red has scored 2 points but Blue is winning with 13 points: