On the odd cycle game and connected rules

We study the positional game where two players, Maker and Breaker, alternately select respectively 1 and b previously unclaimed edges of Kn. Maker wins if she succeeds in claiming all edges of some odd cycle in Kn and Breaker wins otherwise. Improving on a result of Bednarska and Pikhurko, we show that Maker wins the odd cycle game if b≤((4−6)∕5+o(1))n. We furthermore introduce “connected rules” and study the odd cycle game under them, both in the Maker–Breaker as well as in the Client–Waiter variant.