Boštjan Brešar ; Csilla Bujtás ; Pakanun Dokyeesun ; Tanja Dravec - Thresholds for the biased Maker-Breaker domination games

dmtcs:15392 - Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science, October 22, 2025, vol. 27:3 - https://doi.org/10.46298/dmtcs.15392
Thresholds for the biased Maker-Breaker domination gamesArticle

Authors: Boštjan Brešar ORCID; Csilla Bujtás ORCID; Pakanun Dokyeesun ORCID; Tanja Dravec ORCID

    In the $(a,b)$-biased Maker-Breaker domination game, two players alternately select unplayed vertices in a graph $G$ such that Dominator selects $a$ and Staller selects $b$ vertices per move. Dominator wins if the vertices he selected during the game form a dominating set of $G$, while Staller wins if she can prevent Dominator from achieving this goal. Given a positive integer $b$, Dominator's threshold, $\textrm{a}_b$, is the minimum $a$ such that Dominator wins the $(a,b)$-biased game on $G$ when he starts the game. Similarly, $\textrm{a}'_b$ denotes the minimum $a$ such that Dominator wins when Staller starts the $(a,b)$-biased game. Staller's thresholds, $\textrm{b}_a$ and $\textrm{b}'_a$, are defined analogously. It is proved that Staller wins the $(k-1,k)$-biased games in a graph $G$ if its order is sufficiently large with respect to a function of $k$ and the maximum degree of $G$. Along the way, the $\ell$-local domination number of a graph is introduced. This new parameter is proved to bound Dominator's thresholds $\textrm{a}_\ell$ and $\textrm{a}_\ell'$ from above. As a consequence, $\textrm{a}_1'(G)\le 2$ holds for every claw-free graph $G$. More specific results are obtained for thresholds in line graphs and Cartesian grids. Based on the concept of $[1,k]$-factor of a graph $G$, we introduce the star partition width $σ(G)$ of $G$, and prove that $\textrm{a}_1'(G)\le σ(G)$ holds for any nontrivial graph $G$, while $\textrm{a}_1'(G)=σ(G)$ if $G$ is a tree.


    Volume: vol. 27:3
    Section: Combinatorics
    Published on: October 22, 2025
    Accepted on: October 14, 2025
    Submitted on: March 18, 2025
    Keywords: Combinatorics, 05C57

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