Graph Searching Games and Probabilistic Methods is the first book that focuses on the intersection of graph searching games and probabilistic methods.

About the Book

The book explores various applications of these powerful mathematical tools to games and processes such as Cops and Robbers, Zombie and Survivors, and Firefighting. Written in an engaging style, the book is accessible to a wide audience including mathematicians and computer scientists. Readers will find that the book provides state-of-the-art results, techniques, and directions in graph searching games, especially from the point of view of probabilistic methods.

Pursuit-evasion games is an exciting branch of graph theory, with many innocent-looking problems that are very difficult to solve. Written by two experts in this lively area, this book surveys the state-of-the-art results in this area and explains the most important ideas in an engaging manner. Another important theme in this book is probabilistic methods; through fascinating and fun graph searching games, the book covers quite a range of important tools from probabilistic methods and random graphs. This book is fun to read, accessible to students as well as to researchers, and it is an attractive resource for everyone who wants to enter any of these three areas: graph searching games, probabilistic methods, or random graphs. It can also be used as the textbook for a graduate course on these topics.

The book is a thorough survey of the last forty years of work done in the field of graph searching games. The book is well written, easy to read and the sources are handled carefully.

Dr. Anthony Bonato is a globally recognised expert in graph theory and network science. He has authored over 150 papers and eight books, including Dots and Lines: Hidden Networks in Social Media, AI, and Nature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025).