Feature Request: Correspondence Reflection Time Tools

[DimEyeChessGuy]

Hey folks.
I've started a USCF Correspondence tournament. Very excited about playing again.

It would be wonderful if HCE had built-in tools to handle Correspondence games (it has the email feature that I'm utilizing with some tweaks). In particular the ability to enter and track reflection time.

Thanks,
DECG (Tom)

[TimC]

That would be an interesting upgrade. To work correctly, I believe that HCE would also need to be able to import moves, from whatever email account/server you are using for the USCF games, to be able to grab the time stamps from the headers.

A work around, which I have used for over a 2 decades is to use the free program EcTool for the import and mailing of your moves. It has a GUI that allows you to make your move on a chessboard and translates that to an email. It will track usage time in either of 2 ways depending on how you configure it. Last version the Spanish developer made is 7.01 and is now freeware. Help file has plenty of explanation on how to use.

Download is here if you have any interest: https://ectool.software.informer.com/7.0/

I still keep all my games on HCE and just utilize EcTool as a "special" email program.

[DimEyeChessGuy]

First off, thank you for the suggestion. However, I'm now fully and only on Mac. I own Chessbase 15 but I do not have a windows machine anymore. Chessbase does all of the things I've been suggesting for HCE (again, my only point of reference).

I'm making do with HCE... these are just quality of life enhancements that I'm suggesting.

As far as HCE 'needing' to automatically grab the move and header info.... not really. We would just need the same sort of functionality that CB affords in this regard. A correspondence header for each game (establishing the rules) and then a correspondence move dialogue for each move to allow the user to manually enter the information. This would be better than nothing at all and should be programmatically much easier to implement.

Again, thanks for the suggestion. I really do appreciate it.

DECG (Tom)

[TimC]

Mea culpa, I keep forgetting that you are Mac only. Yeah Ectool not a solution for you.

Keep fingers crossed that the dev team implements your very good idea in a future release.

[larryadler]

This would be a good idea. I switched from HCE to Chessbase for various reasons, but I still use HCE as a tool for correspondence games, and I think it's great for that.

[Mark Uniacke]

Thanks Tom, that sounds like an interesting idea.

HCE Pro already has the ability to record these at present using the elapsed move time (emt) command but the input format is not ideal.

You can add a [%emt h:mm:ss] command to a comment for any move, for example [%emt 35:00] will signify that 35 minutes was used.

Alternatively you can use the simpler [%emt 36000] for ten hours as another example.

As I said at present it is not ideal but we will look into this.

[DimEyeChessGuy]

Sounds great! Let me know how I can help. I'm happy to give feedback on anything I can possibly help with. Thanks for listening.

DECG (Tom)

[mrudolf]

That would be an interesting upgrade. To work correctly, I believe that HCE would also need to be able to import moves, from whatever email account/server you are using for the USCF games, to be able to grab the time stamps from the headers.

This will be the simplest, but I understand HCE would need to:
1. Import the data from the server. How many servers are available? Is there a common format?
2. Merge your analysis with moves from the server.

This seems quite tricky unless there is some common ground for multiple servers.

[TimC]

That would be an interesting upgrade. To work correctly, I believe that HCE would also need to be able to import moves, from whatever email account/server you are using for the USCF games, to be able to grab the time stamps from the headers.

This will be the simplest, but I understand HCE would need to:
1. Import the data from the server. How many servers are available? Is there a common format?
2. Merge your analysis with moves from the server.

This seems quite tricky unless there is some common ground for multiple servers.

I believe/think/hope that what you need to do is to point HCE at the email address (the ISP) that the moves are being sent to. Then you would scrape the time info from the header and update or not update the game score itself based on the content of the email. If the full pgn of the game is sent with each move, HCE should be able to update the game score, if just the next move is sent, the HCE user would need to manually update their game score with the move.

As I mentioned above EcTool handles this very nicely, albeit only for Windows. Perhaps reaching out to it's creator would give some insight as he designed it to work with email addresses, FICS and ICCF that I can think of. That would be Andres Valverde...
https://www.chessprogramming.org/Andres_Valverde for more information.

[mrudolf]

But wouldn't that need you to scan all of your emails? Also, the mail servers are different, so this seems to be an overkill compared to getting the data from the web or from some API.

[DimEyeChessGuy]

But wouldn't that need you to scan all of your emails? Also, the mail servers are different, so this seems to be an overkill compared to getting the data from the web or from some API.

I am not asking for all the automated stuff to start with. Although that would be nice. I think that HCE's current "Email Game" is good enough.... if it had the necessary data pasted into the email. For example, clicking a new Game > Email Correspondence Move would use the current email functionality but send an email formatted like this...

This is what that should look like:

One improvement here would be the ability to have my opponents emailed stored in program and have that auto-filled out for me in the email window (Chessbase keeps this information in the Correspondence Header for each game)

Here is the link to Chessbases way of handling this.

I'd love for it all to be automated in the retrieval and sending. But in the meantime, I'd just like the facility to manage reflection time inside of HCE Pro. Having a Correspondence Header dialogue for each game and then a Correspondence Move dialogue for each move would be IMMENSELY helpful to me.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I'm happy to help.

DECG (Tom)

[DimEyeChessGuy]

Here is an optional, more simplified format for the correspondence email. This info would be gathered from the Correspondence Header info and each individual Correspondence Move dialogue. (all of this can be done manually by the user to start. And having manual control should be a part of this even when/if automation is implemented)

[mrudolf]

This can be done but how the computer is going to know the thinking time and the time left?

Also, is the email format common for many servers or is it specific for particular server? Can you even submit your move by email?

[DimEyeChessGuy]

This can be done but how the computer is going to know the thinking time and the time left?

Also, is the email format common for many servers or is it specific for particular server? Can you even submit your move by email?

The time controls are established in the Correspondence Header for the game. For example, USCF Corr. games are 30 days for each 10 moves and your time bank rolls over each 10 moves reached.

So the move dialogue should have options for these items:

• Received: The date you received a move from your opponent. Setting this date "starts your clock", and it should be the first thing you do upon receiving a postcard/e-mail from your opponent. Note that if you forget to do this, you can always manually type in a prior date. The default value is the current date.
  
  Replied: This is the date that you replied to an opponent's move. It's purely an informational value and has no direct bearing on the "clock".
  
  Stamped: This is the postmark date on yours or your opponent's postcard. Or the timestamp you received the email. You are obligated to tell your opponent what date his postcard/email was marked, and he's required to do the same for you. The "Received" and "Stamped" values are what "starts" and "stops" the postal "clock" for keeping track of the players' pondering time.
  
  Penalty: Some postal organizations give penalties for overstepping time controls or delaying the game. You'll seldom use this field, but this is what it's used for.
  
  Days: A manual override for the "Penalty" field. ChessBase will set the penalty field's value automatically based on the criteria you entered in the "Correspondence header" fields, but you can put a check in the "Set manually" box and set a different value in the "Days" field.
  
  Repetitions: You use these fields to keep track of the dates of position repetitions.

If a person is playing on a server (ie. ICCF or whatever) the server keeps track of all of this and HCE Pro doesn't have to bother with that. This functionality would only be needed for email/postal.

As for the email format, yes, the first example contains all the required information for documentation. That one should be the target if possible.

[mrudolf]

One more question then: how would HCE know about the email? Will you paste the email into the game? Into the database?