Playing weighted Tron on Trees

Abstract

We consider the weighted version of the Tron game on graphs where two players, Alice and Bob, each build their own path by claiming one vertex at a time, starting with Alice. The vertices carry non-negative weights that sum up to 1 and either player tries to claim a path with larger total weight than the opponent. We show that if the graph is a tree then Alice can always ensure to get at most 1/5 less than Bob, and that there exist trees where Bob can ensure to get at least 1/5 more than Alice.

10 pages, 5 figures