The random strategy in Maker-Breaker graph minor games

Abstract

In a $(1:b)$ biased Maker-Breaker game, how good a strategy is for a player can be measured by the bias range for which its rival can win, choosing an appropriate counterstrategy. Bednarska and Łuczak proved that, in the $H$-subgraph game, the uniformly random strategy for Maker is essentially optimal with high probability. Here we prove an analogous result for the $H$-graph minor game, and we study for which choices of $H$ the random strategy is within a factor of $1+o(1)$ of being optimal.

17 pages, 1 figure