Winning fast in sparse graph construction games

A graph construction game is a Maker-Breaker game. Maker and Breaker take turns in choosing previously unoccupied edges of the complete graph KN. Maker's aim is to claim a copy of a given target graph G while Breaker's aim is to prevent Maker from doing so. In this paper we show that if G is a d-degenerate graph on n vertices and N > d¹¹2^2d+9n, then Maker can claim a copy of G in at most d¹¹2^2d+7n rounds. We also discuss a lower bound on the number of rounds Maker needs to win, and the gap between these bounds.