English

Let's be Honest: An Optimal No-Regret Framework for Zero-Sum Games

Computer Science and Game Theory 2018-06-07 v3

Abstract

We revisit the problem of solving two-player zero-sum games in the decentralized setting. We propose a simple algorithmic framework that simultaneously achieves the best rates for honest regret as well as adversarial regret, and in addition resolves the open problem of removing the logarithmic terms in convergence to the value of the game. We achieve this goal in three steps. First, we provide a novel analysis of the optimistic mirror descent (OMD), showing that it can be modified to guarantee fast convergence for both honest regret and value of the game, when the players are playing collaboratively. Second, we propose a new algorithm, dubbed as robust optimistic mirror descent (ROMD), which attains optimal adversarial regret without knowing the time horizon beforehand. Finally, we propose a simple signaling scheme, which enables us to bridge OMD and ROMD to achieve the best of both worlds. Numerical examples are presented to support our theoretical claims and show that our non-adaptive ROMD algorithm can be competitive to OMD with adaptive step-size selection.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1802.04221,
  title  = {Let's be Honest: An Optimal No-Regret Framework for Zero-Sum Games},
  author = {Ehsan Asadi Kangarshahi and Ya-Ping Hsieh and Mehmet Fatih Sahin and Volkan Cevher},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.04221},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Machine Learning

R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:19:42.866Z