A simple efficient method of spotting and recognizing hand gestures in video is presented using a network of hidden Markov models and dynamic programming search algorithm. The description starts from designing a set of isolated trajectory models which are stochastic and robust enough to characterize highly variable patterns like human motion, handwriting, and speech. Those models are interconnected to form a single big network termed a spotting network or a spotter that models a continuous stream of gestures and non-gestures as well. The inference over the model is based on dynamic programming. The proposed model is highly efficient and can readily be extended to a variety of recurrent pattern recognition tasks. The test result without any engineering has shown the potential for practical application. At the end of the paper we add some related experimental result that has been obtained using a different model - dynamic Bayesian network - which is also a type of stochastic model.