Strategies for the Shannon switching game

Richard Mansfield
June 16, 2000

We present a proof that the Shannon switching game on a graph with

distinguished vertices A and B has a winning strategy for player Short iff
the graph has a subgraph connecting A to B with two edge disjoint spanning
trees. This theorem was first proved by Lehman in [11]. The difficulty is that
his proof is phrased in terms of matroids and appears very difficult. However,
I was able to cull a neat and short but elegant proof out of Lehman’s work
and that is what I want to present here. Using this proof, we will be able
to give a strategy for player Cut for the graphs in which he has a win. This
strategy is not be quite as neat as Short’s strategy, and does not appear to
be computationally feasible, but at least it does not involve any look ahead
analysis.
We are given a multi-graph G with two distinguished vertices, A and
B. The two players, Cut and Short play alternately. Short’s move consists
of marking an edge while Cut may remove any unmarked edge from the
graph. If Short can succeed at marking an entire path from A to B, he
wins. Otherwise Cut wins. As we shall see shortly, if G contains two trees
connecting A to B having no edges in common but sharing the same vertex
set, then Short has a winning strategy even if he goes second. Our main
theorem is the converse, that if he has a winning strategy from the second
position, then there must be two such trees. Brualdi has written an excellent
expository article about the switching game. See [1]. This article has been
essentially repeated as a section in his book [2, Section 11.6].
Let us say that a graph is positive if it has an edge disjoint pair of span-
ning trees. Then what we wish to show is that G has a positive subgraph
containing both A and B if and only if Short has a winning strategy even if
he plays second. The reader may easily verify that the union of two positive
graphs is either disconnected or positive.

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 The reader may also also easily verify that if there is a positive subgraph
connecting A to B, then Short has a winning strategy. He proceeds as follows:
If Cut removes an edge from one of the two trees, Short finds an edge in the
other tree which reconnects the broken tree and marks it. He then has two
spanning trees for the subgraph with only marked edges in common.
Let us prove the converse. Suppose Short goes second and has a winning
strategy. We must prove the existence of a positive subgraph. So Cut goes
first and deletes an edge. Short then marks an edge, call it a. By induction,
we may assume that there are two trees, S1 and T1 from A to B having a
common vertex set but only the edge a in common.
We now need a lemma. We shall state and use the lemma and only when
the main proof is finished will we come back and prove it. The lemma is the
following: If S and T are two trees with a common vertex set and at most
one edge in common and if P and Q are two distinct vertices of these trees,
then either S ∪ T has a positive subgraph connecting P to Q or it has two
spanning trees with only one edge in common having the additional property
that in at least one of the trees the common edge lies on the path from P to
Q. As a first use of this lemma, we may as well assume that a lies on the
path in S1 from A to B.
If every edge lying on the path from A to B in T1 was spanned by a
positive subgraph of G, then the union of these positive subgraphs would be
a positive graph connecting A to B. So choose an edge b not spanned by any
positive subgraph of G and lying on the path in T1 from A to B. Consider
the fact that Cut could have chosen b on his first move instead of the one he
did choose. Again, by induction, we get trees S2 and T2 avoiding b with a
common vertex set and at most one edge in common joining A to B.
Deleting the edge a from S1 splits S1 into two connected components with
A in one of the components and B in the other. Deleting the edge b from
T1 has a similar effect. Thus, since S2 and T2 are both connected graphs
containing both A and B, the graphs T2 ∪ (T1 \ {b}) and S2 ∪ (S1 \ {a}) are
both connected. In order to apply the Lemma, we also need the condition
that the graphs have only one edge in common. For these graphs this need
not be the case since S1 may overlap T2 and T1 may overlap S2 . However,
since T2 spans every edge in S2 , we may further take all the edges of S2 \ T2
away from T2 ∪ (T1 \ {b}) and still have a connected graph. Similarly, we
may delete T2 \ S2 from S2 ∪ (S1 \ {a}) without losing connectivity. Thus,
the two graphs, T3 = T2 ∪ (T1 \ (S2 ∪ {b})) and S3 = S2 ∪ (S1 \ (T2 ∪ {a}))
are both connected. Both these graphs span the edge b, but neither contain

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b. Furthermore, they have at most one edge in common. Using the lemma
again, we see that S3 ∪ T3 must have two spanning trees whose only common
edge lies on the path in one of the two trees between the two ends of b. That
tree may then be disconnected by deleting the common edge from it and then
reconnected by adding the edge b. This proves the theorem and we are left
with proving the lemma.
To this end, let S and T be the two given trees. A spanning chain is
a sequence C0 , C1 , . . . , Cn such that C0 is the path in S from P to Q and
for each i < n/2, the path C2i+1 is the path in T spanning an edge in C2i
and C2i+2 is the path in S spanning an edge in C2i+1 . If the common edge
is not on any path in any spanning chain, then let S 0 to be all the edges e
in S for which there is a spanning chain with a path containing e, and let
T 0 be all the edges e in T for which there is a spanning chain with a path
containing e. We can easily see that S 0 and T 0 are two edge disjoint trees
with a common vertex set connecting the two given vertices and thus the
first possibility holds.
We complete the lemma by induction on the length of the shortest chain
containing the common edge. Let C0 , . . . , Cn−1 , Cn be such a shortest chain.
If n is 0, there is nothing to prove. If n is even, then Cn is a path in S,
otherwise it is a path in T . In any event, the common edge lies in Cn .
Proceed as follows: Delete the common edge from the appropriate tree. (S
if n is even, T if n is odd.) Then reconnect the tree by adding to it the edge
in Cn−1 spanned by Cn . This new doubled edge lies on a shorter spanning
chain and so the lemma follows by induction.
The above proof yields a strategy for player Cut. Suppose it is Cut’s turn
and Short does not have a forced win. Cut should then find a pair of trees S
and T connecting A to B with a common vertex set but only one unmarked
edge in common. If there are no such trees, he may play at random. Finding
such a pair however, he should perform the construction given in the lemma
to ensure that the common edge lies on the path in S from A to B. He
should then find an edge on the path in T from A to B which is not in any
positive subgraph of G and remove it. Our proof has just shown that if this
procedure allows Short to get a forced win, then Short already had a forced
win before Cut made his move.

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