Mate in ?

[Chessnut1071]

Not really. You just use an EGT generator. Which is a quite simple, very generic program, which would solve all positions of this kind (4 men plus some Pawns). No evaluation needed at all.

EGT for 61 ply???? Simple???? I'd really love to see that code. I'm struggling with only 32-ply. I also only have 1 tiny, little thread.

[hgm]

EGT don't care much about the number of ply. It is the total number of reachable positions with the given pieces that counts. I have built EGT where the distance to conversion was 308 moves (616 ply) with Fairygen in under 2 minutes (King + Bishop + Commoner against King + Nightrider). If you want to try it yourself the 3-vs-1 checkmating applet is a good place: KBNK there takes 38 sec on my machine (it is a slow JavaScript builder that doesn't use symmetry) to find a mate-in-33. But when you replace the Bishop with a 'Y' (a piece that can step 1 square diagonally forward, or one straight back) it takes 44 sec to find the mate-in-85 that KNYK takes.

All this is single-treaded, of course.