There are four players, Blue, Yellow, Red and Green, and a board consisting of 20×20 squares.
Each player has a set of 21 pieces of his colour shaped like the polyominoes up to size five. (A polyomino is a figure built by a number of squares connected along the edges.)
The players alternate in placing one of their pieces on the board. Blue starts, followed by Yellow, then Red, then Green.
Each player has a starting square. Blue's starting square is in the top left corner, Yellow's in the top right corner, Red's in the bottom right corner, and Green's in the bottom left corner. The first piece of a player must cover its starting square.
The following pieces must be placed on empty squares such that the new piece touches at least one piece of its own colour corner by corner but does not touch a piece of its own colour along the edges. The new piece may touch edges of pieces of the opponent colours.
When the player of a colour cannot place any more pieces, the player passes and the next colour continues.
When no player can place any more pieces, the player with the highest score wins. The score of a colour is the number of squares on the board occupied by the colour, plus a bonus of 15 points if the colour could place all of its pieces, plus an additional bonus of 5 points if the colour could place all pieces and the last piece played was the one-square piece.
The game can be played with two players. The first player plays both Blue and Red, the second player Yellow and Green. The points of both colours that a player plays are added.
The game can also be played with three players. The players take turns playing the fourth colour (Green). At the end of the game, the score of Green is ignored.
Note that the original Blokus Classic rules use colourless starting points. This means that each colour may freely choose which of the remaining unoccupied starting points to use for its first move. Pentobi currently only supports the rule variant with coloured starting points because this rule variant is used on the Blokus online server at blokus.com and also was used in most of the past Blokus tournaments.