English

Chain-making games in grid-like posets

Combinatorics 2015-08-06 v1

Abstract

We study the Maker-Breaker game on the hypergraph of chains of fixed size in a poset. In a product of chains, the maximum size of a chain that Maker can guarantee building is kr/2k-\lfloor r/2\rfloor, where kk is the maximum size of a chain in the product, and rr is the maximum size of a factor chain. We also study a variant in which Maker must follow the chain in order, called the {\it Walker-Blocker game}. In the poset consisting of the bottom kk levels of the product of dd arbitrarily long chains, Walker can guarantee a chain that hits all levels if d14d\ge14; this result uses a solution to Conway's Angel-Devil game. When d=2, the maximum that Walker can guarantee is only 2/3 of the levels, and 2/3 is asymptotically achievable in the product of two equal chains.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1108.0710,
  title  = {Chain-making games in grid-like posets},
  author = {Daniel W. Cranston and William B. Kinnersley and Kevin G. Milans and Gregory J. Puleo and Douglas B. West},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1108.0710},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

14 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:45:40.827Z