Chess Mail

Ectool, a solution for email players
50
by Tim Harding
ANYONE who plays chess by email
needs a program to manage the
games. There are several advantages
to using a specialist chess program
rather than just ordinary email
software; in particular, generating and
sending/receiving move messages in
the same program that stores the games
reduces the risk of “clerical” error.
The most popular of such programs is
Ectool. Later this year, other software for
this purpose will be reviewed.
Email chess software should:
a) store the moves/positions and time
data of the games you are playing;
b) display positions graphically;
c) generate email messages to opponents,
and collect their replies;
d) enable your games to be exported
to chess database programs.
Ectool does all these tasks and more.
Now in version 6, it is written by Spanish
programmer Andrés Valverde, who was
interviewed in Chess Mail 5/2000. I have
been using Ectool for my email games
in recent months.
The initial window has several menus
but most of the main functions are
accessible in Ectool 6 via three main
buttons called Load, Mail, Connect (and
there’s a fourth button, Exit).
Games Manager
Clicking “Load” brings you to a list of
all the available games, which will usually
be all the email games you currently
have in progress. Those games where it
is your turn to move are highlighted and
you can set “alarms” to warn you when
your move is overdue.
Games are stored by Ectool in separate
files with the extension ECT. When
you start a new game, you enter the
game data with such information as the
opponent’s name and email address, the
colours and what format to use in the
email messages.
Ectool is very versatile here as it can
produce PGN messages as required
by clubs like IECG, but can also generate
messages in the ICCF template
using either the numeric or algebraic
notations.
Information about opponents (even
pictures) can be stored in an address
book. However, at present this address
book is not linked to the game data.
When an opponent notified me of an
email address change, I altered this in the
address book, assuming the messages
to him would now go to that address
(as would be the case with my normal
email program, Eudora). However, the
address for the opponent in the game
data remained unchanged and he did not
get my move although I was unaware
of this. I guess this is on the wish-list
for version 7.
To load a game, you click on the
game list and it brings up the game
window, which you can near the top of
the screenshot.
The games window is in two parts. On
the left is the list of moves, with the dates
received and sent and the total times.
On the right is a graphical chessboard,
1/2001