Philip M. Cohen is the inventor of several chess variants

Chess variant

A chess variant is a game related to, derived from or inspired by chess. The difference from chess might include one or more of the following:...

. He authored the column Olla Podrida in the periodical Nost-algia published by the (now defunct) correspondence

Correspondence chess

Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, usually through a correspondence chess server, through email or by the postal system; less common methods which have been employed include fax and homing pigeon...

 game club kNights Of the Square Table (NOST). The column regularly featured chess variants, many experimental, since 1972.

Reincarnation Chess

This variant by Cohen uses the same board and pieces as standard chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

, but a captured piece can make its presence felt on the board as a zombie, and can "reincarnate" another zombie back into the game by capturing it.

Move rules

When a capture (or series of captures) takes place on a square, a zombie is created when the capturing piece leaves the square. The zombie assumes the same piece type as the (last) piece captured, and the color

White and Black in chess

In chess, the player who moves first is referred to as "White" and the player who moves second is referred to as "Black". Similarly, the pieces that each conducts are called, respectively, "the white pieces" and "the black pieces". The pieces are often not literally white and black, but some...

 of the capturing player.

• Zombies cannot capture normal pieces or move through them.
• Normal pieces cannot capture zombies or move through them.
• Zombies can capture or move through other zombies.
• Reincarnation: When a zombie (or series of zombies) is captured on a square, a normal piece is created when the capturing zombie leaves the square. The normal piece assumes the same piece type as the (last) zombie captured, and the color of the capturing player.
• Zombie pawns
  Pawn (chess)
  The pawn is the most numerous and weakest piece in the game of chess, historically representing infantry, or more particularly armed peasants or pikemen. Each player begins the game with eight pawns, one on each square of the rank immediately in front of the other pieces...
  
   promote
  Promotion (chess)
  Promotion is a chess rule describing the transformation of a pawn that reaches its eighth rank into the player's choice of a queen, knight, rook, or bishop of the same color . The new piece replaces the pawn on the same square and is part of the move. Promotion is not limited to pieces that have...
  
   to zombie pieces and retain their piece type if reincarnated.
• Pieces reborn on their starting squares regain their usual privileges (the pawn's initial two-square advance; the rook's
  Rook (chess)
  A rook is a piece in the strategy board game of chess. Formerly the piece was called the castle, tower, marquess, rector, and comes...
  
   eligibility to castle
  Castling
  Castling is a special move in the game of chess involving the king and either of the original rooks of the same color. It is the only move in chess in which a player moves two pieces at the same time. Castling consists of moving the king two squares towards a rook on the player's first rank, then...
  
  ).

There is no en passant

En passant

En passant is a move in the board game of chess . It is a special pawn capture which can occur immediately after a player moves a pawn two squares forward from its starting position, and an enemy pawn could have captured it had it moved only one square forward...

capture in Reincarnation Chess.

Chess variant inventions

• Null Chess (1960s)
• Zombie Chess (1964)
• Reincarnation Chess (1960s), a development of Zombie Chess
• Ricochet Chess (1968)
• Free Rotation Chess (1969), a variant of Actuated Revolving Centre (ARC) Chess by A. E. Farebrother and W. H. Rawlings (1937)
• Slippery Centre Chess (c. 1970)
• Crossings Chess (1973), an adaptation to chess of Robert Abbott's game Crossings
  Crossings (game)
  Crossings is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Robert Abbott. The rules were published in Sid Sackson's A Gamut of Games...
  
  
• Heterocoalescence Chess (1973), a variant of Coordinate Chess (Co-Chess) from an idea by Ralph Betza
• Nemesis Chess (1973)
• Surge Chess (1973), a variant of Crossings Chess
• Parton Chess (1974), in honor of V. R. Parton
  V. R. Parton
  Vernon Rylands Parton was an English chess enthusiast and prolific chess variant inventor, his most renowned variant being Alice Chess. Many of Parton's variants were inspired by the fictional characters and stories in the works of Lewis Carroll...
  
  
• Merger Chess (1975)
• Cohen's Error Chess (1977)
• Titti-Frutti Chess (1978), with Ralph Betza
• Archimedes Chess (1979), after Scott Marley
• Mixture Chess (1979)
• Ninerider Chess (1979)
• Nuisance Chess (1979), a variant of Coordinate Chess (Co-Chess) by Ralph Betza (1973)
• Blood-Brother Chess (1980), with R. Wayne Schmittberger
• Fast-Track Chess (1986)