On-line list coloring of matroids

Abstract: A coloring of a matroid is proper if elements of the same color form an independent set. A theorem of Seymour asserts that a k-colorable matroid is also colorable from any lists of size k. In this note we generalize this theorem to the on-line setting. We prove that a coloring of a matroid from lists of size k is possible even if appearances of colors in the lists are recovered color by color by an adversary, while our job is to assign a color immediately after it is recovered. We also prove a more general weighted version of our result with lists of varying sizes. In consequence we get a simple necessary and sufficient condition for matroid list colorability in general case. The main tool we use is the multiple basis exchange property, which we give a simple proof.