2,556 research outputs found
Random strategies are nearly optimal for generalized van der Waerden Games
In a (1 : q) Maker-Breaker game, one of the central questions is to find (or at least estimate) the maximal value of q that allows Maker to win the game. Based on the ideas of Bednarska and Luczak [Bednarska, M., and T. Luczak, Biased positional games for which random strategies are nearly optimal, Combinatorica, 20 (2000), 477–488], who studied biased H-games, we prove general winning criteria for Maker and Breaker and a hypergraph generalization of their result. Furthermore, we study the biased version of a strong generalization of the van der Waerden games introduced by Beck [Beck, J., Van der Waerden and Ramsey type games, Combinatorica, 1 (1981), 103–116] and apply our criteria to determine the threshold bias of these games up to constant factor. As in the result of [Bednarska, M., and T. Luczak, Biased positional games for which random strategies are nearly optimal, Combinatorica, 20 (2000), 477–488], the random strategy for Maker is again the best known strategy.Postprint (updated version
Positional Games
Positional games are a branch of combinatorics, researching a variety of
two-player games, ranging from popular recreational games such as Tic-Tac-Toe
and Hex, to purely abstract games played on graphs and hypergraphs. It is
closely connected to many other combinatorial disciplines such as Ramsey
theory, extremal graph and set theory, probabilistic combinatorics, and to
computer science. We survey the basic notions of the field, its approaches and
tools, as well as numerous recent advances, standing open problems and
promising research directions.Comment: Submitted to Proceedings of the ICM 201
Efficient winning strategies in random-turn Maker-Breaker games
We consider random-turn positional games, introduced by Peres, Schramm,
Sheffield and Wilson in 2007. A -random-turn positional game is a two-player
game, played the same as an ordinary positional game, except that instead of
alternating turns, a coin is being tossed before each turn to decide the
identity of the next player to move (the probability of Player I to move is
). We analyze the random-turn version of several classical Maker-Breaker
games such as the game Box (introduced by Chv\'atal and Erd\H os in 1987), the
Hamilton cycle game and the -vertex-connectivity game (both played on the
edge set of ). For each of these games we provide each of the players with
a (randomized) efficient strategy which typically ensures his win in the
asymptotic order of the minimum value of for which he typically wins the
game, assuming optimal strategies of both players.Comment: 20 page
On the optimality of the uniform random strategy
The concept of biased Maker-Breaker games, introduced by Chv\'atal and Erd{\H
o}s, is a central topic in the field of positional games, with deep connections
to the theory of random structures. For any given hypergraph the
main questions is to determine the smallest bias that allows
Breaker to force that Maker ends up with an independent set of . Here
we prove matching general winning criteria for Maker and Breaker when the game
hypergraph satisfies a couple of natural `container-type' regularity conditions
about the degree of subsets of its vertices. This will enable us to derive a
hypergraph generalization of the -building games, studied for graphs by
Bednarska and {\L}uczak. Furthermore, we investigate the biased version of
generalizations of the van der Waerden games introduced by Beck. We refer to
these generalizations as Rado games and determine their threshold bias up to
constant factors by applying our general criteria. We find it quite remarkable
that a purely game theoretic deterministic approach provides the right order of
magnitude for such a wide variety of hypergraphs, when the generalizations to
hypergraphs in the analogous setup of sparse random discrete structures are
usually quite challenging.Comment: 26 page
Positional games on random graphs
We introduce and study Maker/Breaker-type positional games on random graphs.
Our main concern is to determine the threshold probability for the
existence of Maker's strategy to claim a member of in the unbiased game
played on the edges of random graph , for various target families
of winning sets. More generally, for each probability above this threshold we
study the smallest bias such that Maker wins the biased game. We
investigate these functions for a number of basic games, like the connectivity
game, the perfect matching game, the clique game and the Hamiltonian cycle
game
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