The origin of the game is unknown, but believed to significantly predate an early version, named take me, played in the 1870s. Because of the popularity of losing chess, several variations have spawned. The most widely played (main variant) is described in "Popular Chess Variants" by D. B. Pritchard. Losing chess began to gain popularity in the 20th century, which was facilitated by some publications about this variant in the UK, Germany, and Italy. Nevertheless, basically it was the competition at the amateur level, without a well-developed theory.