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Contemporary applications of machine learning in two-team e-sports and the superior expressivity of multi-agent generative adversarial networks raise important and overlooked theoretical questions regarding optimization in two-team games.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-04-18 Fivos Kalogiannis , Ioannis Panageas , Emmanouil-Vasileios Vlatakis-Gkaragkounis

Long studied as a toy model, quantum zero-sum games have recently resurfaced as a canonical playground for modern areas such as non-local games, quantum interactive proofs, and quantum machine learning. In this simple yet fundamental…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-29 Yiheng Su , Emmanouil-Vasileios Vlatakis-Gkaragkounis , Pucheng Xiong

We study monotone variational inequalities that can arise as optimality conditions for constrained convex optimisation or convex-concave minimax problems and propose a novel algorithm that uses only one gradient/operator evaluation and one…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-24 Michael Sedlmayer , Dang-Khoa Nguyen , Radu Ioan Bot

Nonconvex minimax problems appear frequently in emerging machine learning applications, such as generative adversarial networks and adversarial learning. Simple algorithms such as the gradient descent ascent (GDA) are the common practice…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-25 Junchi Yang , Negar Kiyavash , Niao He

We present a method of backward induction for computing approximate subgame perfect Nash equilibria of infinitely repeated games with discounted payoffs. This uses the selection monad transformer, combined with the searchable set monad…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-07-12 Jules Hedges

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 study infinite-horizon discounted two-player zero-sum Markov games, and develop a decentralized algorithm that provably converges to the set of Nash equilibria under self-play. Our algorithm is based on running an Optimistic Gradient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-08 Chen-Yu Wei , Chung-Wei Lee , Mengxiao Zhang , Haipeng Luo

We consider the problem of minimizing a smooth convex function by reducing the optimization to computing the Nash equilibrium of a particular zero-sum convex-concave game. Zero-sum games can be solved using online learning dynamics, where a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-16 Jun-Kun Wang , Jacob Abernethy

Online gradient descent (OGD) is well known to be doubly optimal under strong convexity or monotonicity assumptions: (1) in the single-agent setting, it achieves an optimal regret of $\Theta(\log T)$ for strongly convex cost functions; and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-04-01 Michael I. Jordan , Tianyi Lin , Zhengyuan Zhou

We consider online learning in multi-player smooth monotone games. Existing algorithms have limitations such as (1) being only applicable to strongly monotone games; (2) lacking the no-regret guarantee; (3) having only asymptotic or slow…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-06 Yang Cai , Weiqiang Zheng

The two-timescale gradient descent-ascent (GDA) is a canonical gradient algorithm designed to find Nash equilibria in min-max games. We analyze the two-timescale GDA by investigating the effects of learning rate ratios on convergence…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-13 Jing An , Jianfeng Lu

Our work focuses on extra gradient learning algorithms for finding Nash equilibria in bilinear zero-sum games. The proposed method, which can be formally considered as a variant of Optimistic Mirror Descent…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-03-09 Michail Fasoulakis , Evangelos Markakis , Yannis Pantazis , Constantinos Varsos

Recently, invariant risk minimization (IRM) (Arjovsky et al.) was proposed as a promising solution to address out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization. In Ahuja et al., it was shown that solving for the Nash equilibria of a new class of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-30 Kartik Ahuja , Karthikeyan Shanmugam , Amit Dhurandhar

The success of adversarial formulations in machine learning has brought renewed motivation for smooth games. In this work, we focus on the class of stochastic Hamiltonian methods and provide the first convergence guarantees for certain…

Finding the mixed Nash equilibria (MNE) of a two-player zero sum continuous game is an important and challenging problem in machine learning. A canonical algorithm to finding the MNE is the noisy gradient descent ascent method which in the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-01-10 Yulong Lu

Understanding and analyzing markets is crucial, yet analytical equilibrium solutions remain largely infeasible. Recent breakthroughs in equilibrium computation rely on zeroth-order policy gradient estimation. These approaches commonly…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-03-17 Nils Kohring , Fabian R. Pieroth , Martin Bichler

Nonsmooth nonconvex-concave minimax problems have attracted significant attention due to their wide applications in many fields. In this paper, we consider a class of nonsmooth nonconvex-concave minimax problems on Riemannian manifolds.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-24 Xiyuan Xie , Qia Li

The Gradient Descent-Ascent (GDA) algorithm, designed to solve minimax optimization problems, takes the descent and ascent steps either simultaneously (Sim-GDA) or alternately (Alt-GDA). While Alt-GDA is commonly observed to converge…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-16 Jaewook Lee , Hanseul Cho , Chulhee Yun

Min-max saddle point games appear in a wide range of applications in machine leaning and signal processing. Despite their wide applicability, theoretical studies are mostly limited to the special convex-concave structure. While some recent…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-03-19 Babak Barazandeh , Meisam Razaviyayn

We introduce a new approach for computing optimal equilibria via learning in games. It applies to extensive-form settings with any number of players, including mechanism design, information design, and solution concepts such as correlated,…