A GAME OF COPS AND ROBBERS

Adam Scarchilli

Outline

Rules of the game

Challenge
Approach
Algorithm
Pseudo-Code
Bonus: Strategies

Rules of the Game

Pursuit game cop wants to catch the robber

and robber wants to avoid the cop
To play, make a graph with vertices and edges
Cop chooses a vertex
Robber chooses a vertex
Cop starts
Alternate turns moving along connected
vertices
Continue until:

They are on the same vertex (cop catches robber)

The cop gives up and the robber wins

Challenge

Solve the game:

Suppose the cop and robber plays perfectly
On a given graph, two outcomes:

Cop win cop will win with perfect play

Robber win robber will win with perfect play

You give me a graph, I can tell you who will

win

But how to do in general?

Approach

Use a metagraph! every vertex is a game state

game state answers 3 questions

Whos turn to move (cop or robber)

Where is the cop (what vertex)
Where is the robber (what vertex)
Ex. (C, 1, 2) means it is the cops turn to move, the cop
is on vertex 1, and the robber is on vertex 2.

If a move goes from one game state to another,

they are connected by a directional edge in a
digraph

For this simple graph

Heres the metagraph!!!

Algorithm

The secret work backwards!

Start from positions where the robber is caught
Get rid of those positions until you have a new
graph where the robber no longer has the option
to make those mistakes

If the robber lands on the cop, get rid of the end node
If the cop lands on the robber, also get rid of the
second to last node (robber cannot make a bad
move / lose the next turn)

Repeat on the new graph. Stripping end vertices

can create new end vertices. And so on.

Algorithm

After iteratively removing end states, two cases:

Final Graph is empty cop win

Final Graph is non-empty robber win

Why? Graph is empty all bad robber moves are

eliminated, he has no safe moves left

Graph is non-empty robber simply stays on this

final graph

cop can never escape these cycles to find a winning

path (otherwise removing end points would cut into
the cycles via the escape path)

Pseudo-Code

While End nodes exist:

For all end nodes:
If the robber moved last:
Delete the end node and all connections to it
If the cop moved last:
Delete the end node and all connections to it
For all cop moves that goes to the end node:
Delete the cop moves and all connections
If final graph is empty:
cop win
Else:
robber win

Bonus: Strategies

Can you show the best strategy?

Cop win graphs:

Cop quickest ways to win

Robber list of moves to always evade capture

Track how you removed vertices in the metagraph

Following this sequence is the fastest way to win

Robber win graphs:

Final metagraph is not empty

Just stay on that metagraph!