Because, as others mentioned, the engines played in the assumption that the 50-moves rule was in effect. If Houdini was aware that cursed wins would indeed be scored as wins, it might have chosen other moves that may have led to a draw (or not..). Since we'll never know that, an adjudication is the solutions. In fact, this is what adjudication in sports is for.Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote: SF is able to deliver mate on its own in such positions, so why deprive it of a well-deserved win?
Note also that people have checked some posts ago that Houdini did in fact had other drawish moves. It did not play those because engine efficiency requires it to opt for a drawish move as soon it finds one. And of course, a drawish TB hit is the fastest way to do it, so other draw possibilities are automatically pruned.
As I mentioned in my last post, I agree that cursed wins should be scored as wins, but only in engine tournaments where all engines have access to tablebases that can disable the 50-moves rule (you can also make a pretty good case for that in correspondence matches).
This is not the case of TCEC, because it has dozens of entrant engines and not all comply to that requirement. TCEC is all about quick access to the best live chess there is: one-click universal access, LTC games, all of the top engines, live chat flaming.. (lol). It would be weird to have different rules depending on whether engines have "50-moves /OFF" tablebase switches or not, so I think Anton should just adjust cutechess to score cursed wins as draws and otherwise leave TCEC as it is.
As to human games, well 200 moves (as you mentioned in the other thread, which seems to be broken for me at the moment) is far too much, even in special positions. That would lead to the dominant player to keep on playing drawn positions for a long time, hoping that his opponent messes up (he risks nothing). In some mind sports this sort of futile play is considered unethical and is liable to disciplinary sanctions. I agree with that view because it does not contribute to the promotion of the sport.