The point-open type of subsets of the reals (Q2639366)

For a space X and an ordinal \(\alpha\), \(G_{\alpha}(X)\) is the following two-player game: at stage \(\beta <\alpha\), the first player chooses a point of X and then the second player chooses its open neighborhood in X. The first player wins if the sets chosen by the second player at all stages \(<\alpha\) cover the space X; \(pot(X)=\inf \{\alpha:\) first player has a winning strategy in \(G_{\alpha}(X)\}\). In the paper under review, the authors give an extensive study of pot(X), for X being a subset of \({\mathbb{R}}\). It is shown that for any such X, \(pot(X)\leq \omega_ 1\) and if \(pot(X)<\omega_ 1\), then is a \(C''\) set. \(pot(X)=\omega \cdot 2\) iff X is uncountable and is concentrated about some countable subset of itself. It is also shown that ccc forcing does not collapse pot(X). On the other hand, \textit{D. Fremlin} has shown that under Martin's axiom plus non CH, \(pot(X)=\omega_ 1\) for an arbitrary uncountable subset of \({\mathbb{R}}\).