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An ideal strategy in zero-sum games should not only grant the player an average reward no less than the value of Nash equilibrium, but also exploit the (adaptive) opponents when they are suboptimal. While most existing works in Markov games…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-15 Qinghua Liu , Yuanhao Wang , Chi Jin

In this paper, we investigate the power of {\it regularization}, a common technique in reinforcement learning and optimization, in solving extensive-form games (EFGs). We propose a series of new algorithms based on regularizing the payoff…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-07-10 Mingyang Liu , Asuman Ozdaglar , Tiancheng Yu , Kaiqing Zhang

Shuffling gradient methods are widely used in modern machine learning tasks and include three popular implementations: Random Reshuffle (RR), Shuffle Once (SO), and Incremental Gradient (IG). Compared to the empirical success, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-07 Zijian Liu , Zhengyuan Zhou

We show that natural classes of regularized learning algorithms with a form of recency bias achieve faster convergence rates to approximate efficiency and to coarse correlated equilibria in multiplayer normal form games. When each player in…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-12-14 Vasilis Syrgkanis , Alekh Agarwal , Haipeng Luo , Robert E. Schapire

Regret minimization is a powerful method for finding Nash equilibria in Normal-Form Games (NFGs) and Extensive-Form Games (EFGs), but it typically guarantees convergence only for the average strategy. However, computing the average strategy…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-18 Hang Ren , Yulin Wu , Shuhan Qi , Jiajia Zhang , Xiaozhen Sun , Tianzi Ma , Xuan Wang

This work tackles the complexities of multi-player scenarios in \emph{unknown games}, where the primary challenge lies in navigating the uncertainty of the environment through bandit feedback alongside strategic decision-making. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-27 Yingru Li , Liangqi Liu , Wenqiang Pu , Hao Liang , Zhi-Quan Luo

In this paper we establish efficient and \emph{uncoupled} learning dynamics so that, when employed by all players in a general-sum multiplayer game, the \emph{swap regret} of each player after $T$ repetitions of the game is bounded by…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-10-07 Ioannis Anagnostides , Gabriele Farina , Christian Kroer , Chung-Wei Lee , Haipeng Luo , Tuomas Sandholm

This paper studies the last-iterate convergence properties of the exponential weights algorithm with constant learning rates. We consider a repeated interaction in discrete time, where each player uses an exponential weights algorithm…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-07-10 Maurizio d'Andrea , Fabien Gensbittel , Jérôme Renault

Variational inequalities have recently attracted considerable interest in machine learning as a flexible paradigm for models that go beyond ordinary loss function minimization (such as generative adversarial networks and related deep…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-12 Yu-Guan Hsieh , Franck Iutzeler , Jérôme Malick , Panayotis Mertikopoulos

We establish finite-time last-iterate guarantees for vanilla stochastic gradient descent in co-coercive games under noisy feedback. This is a broad class of games that is more general than strongly monotone games, allows for multiple Nash…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Siddharth Chandak , Ramanan Tamizholi , Nicholas Bambos

In this paper we study the smooth convex-concave saddle point problem. Specifically, we analyze the last iterate convergence properties of the Extragradient (EG) algorithm. It is well known that the ergodic (averaged) iterates of EG…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-08 Noah Golowich , Sarath Pattathil , Constantinos Daskalakis , Asuman Ozdaglar

It is well known that the optimal convergence rate for stochastic optimization of smooth functions is $O(1/\sqrt{T})$, which is same as stochastic optimization of Lipschitz continuous convex functions. This is in contrast to optimizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-07-30 Mehrdad Mahdavi , Rong Jin

We study online learning in two-player uninformed Markov games, where the opponent's actions and policies are unobserved. In this setting, Tian et al. (2021) show that achieving no-external-regret is impossible without incurring an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Junyan Liu , Haipeng Luo , Zihan Zhang , Lillian J. Ratliff

We study the problem of learning in zero-sum matrix games with repeated play and bandit feedback. Specifically, we focus on developing uncoupled algorithms that guarantee, without communication between players, the convergence of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Côme Fiegel , Pierre Ménard , Tadashi Kozuno , Michal Valko , Vianney Perchet

We study the limiting behavior of the mixed strategies that result from optimal no-regret learning strategies in a repeated game setting where the stage game is any 2 by 2 competitive game. We consider optimal no-regret algorithms that are…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-03-03 Vidya Muthukumar , Soham Phade , Anant Sahai

This work studies an independent natural policy gradient (NPG) algorithm for the multi-agent reinforcement learning problem in Markov potential games. It is shown that, under mild technical assumptions and the introduction of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-30 Youbang Sun , Tao Liu , Ruida Zhou , P. R. Kumar , Shahin Shahrampour

We study the alternating gradient descent-ascent (AltGDA) algorithm in two-player zero-sum games. Alternating methods, where players take turns to update their strategies, have long been recognized as simple and practical approaches for…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Tianlong Nan , Shuvomoy Das Gupta , Garud Iyengar , Christian Kroer

We show that, for any sufficiently small fixed $\epsilon > 0$, when both players in a general-sum two-player (bimatrix) game employ optimistic mirror descent (OMD) with smooth regularization, learning rate $\eta = O(\epsilon^2)$ and $T =…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-10-10 Ioannis Anagnostides , Gabriele Farina , Ioannis Panageas , Tuomas Sandholm

Learning and computation of equilibria are central problems in game theory, theory of computation, and artificial intelligence. In this work, we introduce proximal regret, a new notion of regret based on proximal operators that lies…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-06 Yang Cai , Constantinos Daskalakis , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Weiqiang Zheng

The theory of integral quadratic constraints (IQCs) allows the certification of exponential convergence of interconnected systems containing nonlinear or uncertain elements. In this work, we adapt the IQC theory to study first-order methods…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-28 Guodong Zhang , Xuchan Bao , Laurent Lessard , Roger Grosse