English

Online Ramsey numbers of the claw versus cycles

Combinatorics 2026-01-12 v1

Abstract

The online Ramsey number r~(G,H)\tilde r(G,H) is defined via a Builder--Painter game on an empty graph with countably many vertices. In each round, Builder reveals an edge, which Painter immediately colors either red or blue. Builder wins once a red copy of GG or a blue copy of HH appears, and r~(G,H)\tilde r(G,H) is the minimum number of edges Builder must reveal to force a win. For a long cycle CC_\ell, the online Ramsey numbers r~(G,C)\tilde r(G,C_\ell) are known only for a few specific choices of GG. In particular, exact values were determined for G=P3G=P_3 by Cyman, Dzido, Lapinskas, and Lo (Electron. J. Combin., 2015), while asymptotically tight results were obtained when GG is an even cycle by Adamski, Bednarska-Bzd\c{e}ga, and Bla\v{z}ej (SIAM J. Discrete Math., 2024). In this paper, we consider the case where GG is the claw K1,3K_{1,3} and determine the exact value of r~(K1,3,C)\tilde r(K_{1,3},C_\ell). We show that r~(K1,3,C)=3(+1)2for all 13. \tilde r(K_{1,3},C_\ell)=\left\lfloor \frac{3(\ell+1)}{2} \right\rfloor \quad \text{for all } \ell \ge 13.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.05452,
  title  = {Online Ramsey numbers of the claw versus cycles},
  author = {Hexuan Zhi and Yanbo Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.05452},
  year   = {2026}
}