English

Hitting time results for Maker-Breaker games

Combinatorics 2014-01-07 v1 Discrete Mathematics Probability

Abstract

We study Maker-Breaker games played on the edge set of a random graph. Specifically, we consider the random graph process and analyze the first time in a typical random graph process that Maker starts having a winning strategy for his final graph to admit some property \mP\mP. We focus on three natural properties for Maker's graph, namely being kk-vertex-connected, admitting a perfect matching, and being Hamiltonian. We prove the following optimal hitting time results: with high probability Maker wins the kk-vertex connectivity game exactly at the time the random graph process first reaches minimum degree 2k2k; with high probability Maker wins the perfect matching game exactly at the time the random graph process first reaches minimum degree 22; with high probability Maker wins the Hamiltonicity game exactly at the time the random graph process first reaches minimum degree 44. The latter two statements settle conjectures of Stojakovi\'{c} and Szab\'{o}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1008.1865,
  title  = {Hitting time results for Maker-Breaker games},
  author = {Sonny Ben-Shimon and Asaf Ferber and Dan Hefetz and Michael Krivelevich},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1008.1865},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

24 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T15:59:23.745Z