AbstractWe study Maker‐Breaker games played on the edge set of a random graph. Specifically, we analyze the moment a typical random graph process first becomes a Maker's win in a game in which Maker's goal is to build a graph which admits some monotone increasing property \documentclass{article} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{amsmath,amssymb} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \begin{align*}\mathcal{P}\end{align*} \end{document}. We focus on three natural target properties for Maker's graph, namely being k ‐vertex‐connected, admitting a perfect matching, and being Hamiltonian. We prove the following optimal hitting time results: with high probability Maker wins the k ‐vertex connectivity game exactly at the time the random graph process first reaches minimum degree 2k; with high probability Maker wins the perfect matching game exactly at the time the random graph process first reaches minimum degree 2; with high probability Maker wins the Hamiltonicity game exactly at the time the random graph process first reaches minimum degree 4. The latter two statements settle conjectures of Stojaković and Szabó. We also prove generalizations of the latter two results; these generalizations partially strengthen some known results in the theory of random graphs. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 2011