A human beginner will never get a position of drawn K vs KBP against the engine in the first place(and I do not assume games with big handicap).lkaufman wrote:It's not a question of speed. I think that most programs evaluate endings such as KBP (wrong rook pawn) vs K as something like +.02 or so. The point is that the program should prefer to reach the good side of this ending to let's say just K vs. K, as the engine has no knowledge of whom the opponent may be; perhaps it's a beginner who doesn't know to keep the king in the corner. Also strong human players behave this way too; even if we know the result will be a draw anyway, we prefer to have the "sunny side" of the draw, if only to show the spectators which side was closer to winning.
The only practical reason to continue is that you hope that the opponent engine has a bug and it may have a bug
For example the programmer may implement a wrong rule that if the k blocks the pawn it is a draw without calculating so the engine may play Kh6 in the following position without calculating(I remember that some version of Junior had this type of bug).
[d]8/4K1k1/6B1/7P/8/8/8/8 b - - 0 1