You and your opponent will each need your own deck of 60 cards,a coin to flip,and some counters to mark damage to your Pokemon.(You might want to have one color count as 10 damage each and the other color to count as 30 damage each.)

Shuffle your deck and draw a starting hand of seven cards.Put the rest of your deck face-down in front of you.

If you don't have a Basic Pokemon card in your hand ( it'll say "Basic Pokemon" in the upper left hand corner),show your hand to your opponent,shuffle it back into your deck,and draw 7 new cards.Your opponent may then draw up to 2 extra cards.If you still don't have any Basic Pokemon in your new hand,you repeat this process,but your opponent gets to draw up to 2 extra cards each time!

You and your opponent each choose a Basic Pokemon card from your hands and put them face-down.These will be your starting Active Pokemon.

Each player may,if he or she wishes,choose up to 5 Basic Pokemon from his or her hand and put them face-down on his or her bench (this is where Pokemon wait when they're not the Active Pokemon).

Put the top 6 cards of your deck face-down in front of you.These are your prizes,which you take when your opponent's Pokemon are knocked out.You can't look at a prize card until you take it.

Flip a coin to decide who goes first.You can use your special Pokemon coin,if you have one.

Flip over all the Active and Benched Pokemon that have been put on the table.