Circe chess

Circe chess is a chess variant in which a captured piece is not simply removed from the board but instead returns to its own original starting square as soon as it is captured, provided that square is unoccupied; if the square is occupied the captured piece is removed as in orthodox chess. The game was invented by the French chess composer Pierre Monreal in 1967, and its rules were first detailed by Monreal together with Jean-Pierre Boyer in an article published in the magazine Probleme in 1968. The rebirth rule dramatically changes chess tactics, since a capture can restore an opponent's piece to a useful square rather than eliminating it from the game, and composers have used the variant extensively to build problems built around this point-restoring effect. The game takes its name from Circe, the enchantress in Homer's Odyssey who instructs Odysseus on how to travel into the underworld and safely return, a reference to the way captured pieces in this variant can likewise return to the board after being taken.