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Concavity and its refinements underpin tractability in multiplayer games, where players independently choose actions to maximize their own payoffs which depend on other players' actions. In concave games, where players' strategy sets are…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-12 Vincent Leon , Iosif Sakos , Ryann Sim , Antonios Varvitsiotis

We develop new tools in the theory of nonlinear random matrices and apply them to study the performance of the Sum of Squares (SoS) hierarchy on average-case problems. The SoS hierarchy is a powerful optimization technique that has achieved…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2023-02-10 Goutham Rajendran

We study the computation of equilibria of anonymous games, via algorithms that may proceed via a sequence of adaptive queries to the game's payoff function, assumed to be unknown initially. The general topic we consider is \emph{query…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-05-06 Paul W. Goldberg , Stefano Turchetta

In order to obtain the best-known guarantees, algorithms are traditionally tailored to the particular problem we want to solve. Two recent developments, the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) and the Sum-of-Squares (SOS) method, surprisingly…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-05-28 Boaz Barak , David Steurer

Worst-case hardness results for most equilibrium computation problems have raised the need for beyond-worst-case analysis. To this end, we study the smoothed complexity of finding pure Nash equilibria in Network Coordination Games, a…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2019-02-27 Shant Boodaghians , Rucha Kulkarni , Ruta Mehta

Equilibria of realistic multiplayer games constitute a key solution concept both in practical applications, such as online advertising auctions and electricity markets, and in analytical frameworks used to study strategic voting in…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Jakub Černý , Shuvomoy Das Gupta , Christian Kroer

We present a general approach to rounding semidefinite programming relaxations obtained by the Sum-of-Squares method (Lasserre hierarchy). Our approach is based on using the connection between these relaxations and the Sum-of-Squares proof…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-12-24 Boaz Barak , Jonathan Kelner , David Steurer

The complexity of computing equilibrium refinements has been at the forefront of algorithmic game theory research, but it has remained open in the seminal class of potential games; we close this fundamental gap in this paper. We first show…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Ioannis Anagnostides , Maria-Florina Balcan , Kiriaki Fragkia , Tuomas Sandholm , Emanuel Tewolde , Brian Hu Zhang

The degree-$4$ Sum-of-Squares (SoS) SDP relaxation is a powerful algorithm that captures the best known polynomial time algorithms for a broad range of problems including MaxCut, Sparsest Cut, all MaxCSPs and tensor PCA. Despite being an…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2019-11-05 Sidhanth Mohanty , Prasad Raghavendra , Jeff Xu

A celebrated connection in the interface of online learning and game theory establishes that players minimizing swap regret converge to correlated equilibria (CE) -- a seminal game-theoretic solution concept. Despite the long history of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Ioannis Anagnostides , Alkis Kalavasis , Tuomas Sandholm

We introduce a method for proving Sum-of-Squares (SoS)/ Lasserre hierarchy lower bounds when the initial problem formulation exhibits a high degree of symmetry. Our main technical theorem allows us to reduce the study of the positive…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2016-02-11 Adam Kurpisz , Samuli Leppänen , Monaldo Mastrolilli

Nash equilibrium is a popular solution concept for solving imperfect-information games in practice. However, it has a major drawback: it does not preclude suboptimal play in branches of the game tree that are not reached in equilibrium.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-05-29 Christian Kroer , Gabriele Farina , Tuomas Sandholm

We introduce Cut-and-Play, a practically-efficient algorithm for computing Nash equilibria in simultaneous non-cooperative games where players decide via nonconvex and possibly unbounded optimization problems with separable payoff…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-06 Margarida Carvalho , Gabriele Dragotto , Andrea Lodi , Sriram Sankaranarayanan

There has been significant recent progress in algorithms for approximation of Nash equilibrium in large two-player zero-sum imperfect-information games and exact computation of Nash equilibrium in multiplayer strategic-form games. While…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-01 Sam Ganzfried

Zero-sum games arise in a wide variety of problems, including robust optimization and adversarial learning. However, algorithms deployed for finding a local Nash equilibrium in these games often converge to non-Nash stationary points. This…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Kushagra Gupta , Xinjie Liu , Ross Allen , Ufuk Topcu , David Fridovich-Keil

We give an algorithm for solving unique games (UG) instances whenever low-degree sum-of-squares proofs certify good bounds on the small-set-expansion of the underlying constraint graph via a hypercontractive inequality. Our algorithm is in…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2021-06-29 Mitali Bafna , Boaz Barak , Pravesh Kothari , Tselil Schramm , David Steurer

We study the Sum of Squares (SoS) Hierarchy with a view towards combinatorial optimization. We survey the use of the SoS hierarchy to obtain approximation algorithms on graphs using their spectral properties. We present a simplified proof…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2022-09-02 Goutham Rajendran

The Sum of Squares (\sos{}) hierarchy gives an automatized technique to create a family of increasingly tight convex relaxations for binary programs. There are several problems for which a constant number of rounds of this hierarchy give…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-05-19 Victor Verdugo , José Verschae , Andreas Wiese

Nash equilibrium is one of the most influential solution concepts in game theory. With the development of computer science and artificial intelligence, there is an increasing demand on Nash equilibrium computation, especially for Internet…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Hanyu Li , Wenhan Huang , Zhijian Duan , David Henry Mguni , Kun Shao , Jun Wang , Xiaotie Deng

We consider the problem of computing stationary points in min-max optimization, with a particular focus on the special case of computing Nash equilibria in (two-)team zero-sum games. We first show that computing $\epsilon$-Nash equilibria…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Ioannis Anagnostides , Ioannis Panageas , Tuomas Sandholm , Jingming Yan
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