Component Games on Random Graphs
Rani Hod, Michael Krivelevich, Tobias Müller, Alon Naor, Nicholas Wormald · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2020
In the $\left(1:b\right)$ component game played on a graph $G$, two players, Maker and Breaker, alternately claim~$1$ and~$b$ previously unclaimed edges of $G$, respectively. Maker's aim is to maximise the size of a largest connected component in her graph, while Breaker is trying to minimise it. We show that the outcome of the game on the binomial random graph is strongly correlated with the appearance of a nonempty $(b+2)$-core in the graph. For any integer $k$, the $k$-core of a graph is its largest subgraph of minimum degree at least $k$. Pittel, Spencer and Wormald showed in 1996 that for any $k\ge3$ there exists an explicitly defined constant $c_{k}$ such that $p=c_{k}/n$ is the threshold function for the appearance of the $k$-core in $G(n,p)$. More precisely, $G(n,c/n)$ has WHP a linear-size $k$-core when the constant $c>c_{k}$, and an empty $k$-core when $cc_{b+2}$, while Breaker can WHP prevent Maker from building larger than polylogarithmic-size components if $c