In its native land, the game has been largely overshadowed by Western (international) chess, although it remains popular in the northwest regions.

The game starts with the Red player (depicted here having white pieces), followed by the Black player, placing their other pieces arbitrarily on their own halves of the board (known as sit-tee or troops deployment): chariots can be put on any square on the back rank.

In official tournaments, a small curtain is used on the middle of the board to prevent the players seeing each other's deployment during the sit-tee phase.

Feudal lords promote to general when they reach diagonal lines marked on the board.

In the version reported in A History of Chess in 1913, a game of sittuyin had three stages: Anne Sunnucks writes that in some variations, three dice were thrown and each player made three moves at a time.