The very first version of the game (aired September 4, 1975) emphasized knowledge rather than logic; two families competed from their homes.

In the next two years only two games were aired, the second of which, on 24 December 1977, already was close to today's format: a top spinning on the table selected a viewer's question which is discussed for one minute by a team of 6 persons; the host is "invisible" and present only as a voice.

The final major change in rules, in 1982, established that the game continues until 6 points are scored by either side.

Since 1990, TV broadcasting of the game takes place in the Okhotnichy domik that is located in the Neskuchny Garden.

[3] The game quickly became popular, and a dozen or so of the best players from the TV version have become household names of the same magnitude as pop-music stars: Viktor Sidnev, Nurali Latypov, Alexander Drouz, Rovshan Askerov, Fyodor Dvinyatin, Boris Burda, Anatoly Wasserman, Maxim Potashyov, among others.

(Its predecessor, Merv Griffin Enterprises, produced Wheel of Fortune, a game show successfully imported into Russia under the title Pole Chudes in 1990).

The new show aimed to preserve the essence of the Russian original, although producers had stated that there would be "tweaks" to the format and feature an on-camera host.

The originally produced episodes were burned off by ABC over a period of six weeks on Sunday afternoons as counterprogramming for NFL games on CBS and Fox (depending on market and television restrictions, the show often went up against meaningless games in some markets where a poorly performing team may be mandated to be covered in that market) after the October 2011 Las Vegas tragedy, and there was no indication that any new episodes would be produced in the future, despite critical acclaim by critics and game show fans alike.

In addition to the original TV version, which to this date is one of the most popular TV programs in Russia, a competitive variant exists that is played by over 50,000 teams in all countries of the former USSR and in Russian-speaking diasporas around the world, most notably in Israel, Germany, Finland, United Kingdom, United States and Canada.

[11] Although Russian is the official language of most national and all international tournaments, there are some countries like Bulgaria, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Georgia where non-Russian-language teams are more numerous.

Face-to-face World Championships have been held every year since 2002 with corporate sponsorship and under the aegis of TV Igra and the governments and National Olympic committees of Russia and Azerbaijan.

To qualify, 4 methods exist: These competitions rely on logic rather than knowledge too, but usually require more erudition than the TV versions due to high educational level of the players.