The goal of this work is to study the application of the Cross-Entropy (CE) algorithm to problems in combinatorial optimization. This relatively new algorithm has been successfully applied to the Maximum Cut, the Travelling Salesperson, the Shortest Path problems, to Networks, Graph Coloring and other types of hard optimization problems. The CE method is based on an adaptive generic randomized algorithm. It employs an auxiliary random mechanism (a distribution function) equipped with a set of parameters, which transforms the deterministic problem into a stochastic one. The CE algorithm is a...