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Nobody owns the pieces. Move one from the lit row, exactly as far as its number, and land in the goal beyond the far side.
Six by six, twelve pieces numbered one, two or three, and a goal strip beyond each end of the board. The rule that makes this game unlike any other is that the pieces belong to nobody: on your turn you must move one from the lit row, which is simply the row nearest your own side that still has a piece on it.
A piece travels exactly as many squares as its number, one step at a time up, down, left or right. It may not pass through an occupied square and may not step twice on the same square within one move.
What happens at the end of that count is the heart of it. If the square is empty, the piece lands. If it is occupied, you choose: push that piece out to any empty square on the board and take its place, or bounce, which means carrying straight on from that square for as many more steps as the number of the piece you landed on. A bounce can hit another piece and bounce again, so a well placed three can travel most of the board in one move.
Reach the goal beyond the far row with an exact count and you win. Since the row you vacate becomes your opponent's lit row, where you drop a pushed-out piece is often a bigger decision than where you move. Each win brings a rival that searches one level deeper and a shorter limit on the number of moves the game may last; when that limit reaches zero the run is over. Your score is rivals beaten.
Read the lit row before you read anything else. It is not chosen by you, it is whatever row still has a piece nearest your side, so the first question of every move is which row your opponent will be forced to use next. Emptying your front row entirely does not free you — it simply promotes the row behind it, and if that row is full of threes you have just armed the enemy.
That is why pushing a piece out is usually the real move. You can send it anywhere empty, which means you are choosing your opponent's lit row and its contents at the same time. Dropping a one on an otherwise empty row nearest them is the classic smothering play: their next move is forced to be that single short piece, and short pieces cannot start long bounce chains.
Bounces are the only way to cross the board quickly, and they need traffic. A piece can only bounce off another piece, so a board with a clear middle is a slow board, and a board with a loose cluster two or three squares from the far row is a board where somebody is about to win. Before you place a piece anywhere near the far side, count whether it completes a chain for your opponent.
The goal needs an exact count, which is the most common way beginners lose a won position. A three sitting on the far row cannot enter the goal — it would overshoot by two — but a one there scores immediately. Watch which numbers are sitting on the last row, on both sides, because they are the only pieces that can finish the game from there.
As the move limit shrinks the game changes character completely. With forty moves you can manoeuvre and smother; with twelve you have to build a threat immediately and accept that a failed attack loses on time rather than on the board. In the short games, prefer any move that leaves a legal bounce chain for yourself next turn over a move that merely looks safe.