Related papers: When to Quit Gambling, if You Must!
We study discounted infinitely repeated games in which players agree on a cooperative mixed action profile but, at each step, observe only the realized pure actions. This form of imperfect monitoring breaks classical trigger strategies,…
Under non-exponential discounting, we develop a dynamic theory for stopping problems in continuous time. Our framework covers discount functions that induce decreasing impatience. Due to the inherent time inconsistency, we look for…
Aggregating risks from multiple sources can be complex and demanding, and decision makers usually adopt heuristics to simplify the evaluation process. This paper axiomatizes two closed related and yet different heuristics, narrow bracketing…
We study the complexity of solving two-player infinite duration games played on a fixed finite graph, where the control of a node is not predetermined but rather assigned randomly. In classic random-turn games, control of each node is…
Motivated by the fact that humans like some level of unpredictability or novelty, and might therefore get quickly bored when interacting with a stationary policy, we introduce a novel non-stationary bandit problem, where the expected reward…
In online betting, the bookmaker can update the payoffs it offers on a particular event many times before the event takes place, and the updated payoffs may depend on the bets accumulated thus far. We study the problem of bookmaking with…
We describe the probability theory behind a casino game, blackjack, and the procedure to compute the optimal strategy for a deck of arbitrary cards and player's expected win given that he follows the optimal strategy. The exact blackjack…
We consider the Chance Constrained Model Predictive Control problem for polynomial systems subject to disturbances. In this problem, we aim at finding optimal control input for given disturbed dynamical system to minimize a given cost…
In a prophet inequality problem, $n$ independent random variables are presented to a gambler one by one. The gambler decides when to stop the sequence and obtains the most recent value as reward. We evaluate a stopping rule by the…
Consider a two-player game repeated N times. Player 1 can choose between two styles (for interpretability, offensive and defensive), whereas Player 2 uses a single fixed style. Let X N\,:= \#wins -\#losses for Player 1 after N games, and…
Many decision problems in economics, information technology, and industry can be transformed to an optimal stopping of adapted random vectors with some utility function over the set of Markov times with respect to filtration build by the…
A multi-player competitive Dynkin stopping game is constructed. Each player can either exit the game for a fixed payoff, determined a priori, or stay and receive an adjusted payoff depending on the decision of other players. The single…
This paper studies a sequential decision problem where payoff distributions are known and where the riskiness of payoffs matters. Equivalently, it studies sequential choice from a repeated set of independent lotteries. The decision-maker is…
We consider concurrent games played on graphs. At every round of a game, each player simultaneously and independently selects a move; the moves jointly determine the transition to a successor state. Two basic objectives are the safety…
Originally motivated by default risk management applications, this paper investigates a novel problem, referred to as the profitable bandit problem here. At each step, an agent chooses a subset of the K possible actions. For each action…
We consider the classic Kelly gambling problem with general distribution of outcomes, and an additional risk constraint that limits the probability of a drawdown of wealth to a given undesirable level. We develop a bound on the drawdown…
We consider a game-theoretic model where individuals compete over a shared failure-prone system or resource. We investigate the effectiveness of a taxation mechanism in controlling the utilization of the resource at the Nash equilibrium…
This paper extends my research applying statistical decision theory to treatment choice with sample data, using maximum regret to evaluate the performance of treatment rules. The specific new contribution is to study as-if optimization…
Consider gambler's ruin with three players, 1, 2, and 3, having initial capitals $A$, $B$, and $C$ units. At each round a pair of players is chosen (uniformly at random) and a fair coin flip is made resulting in the transfer of one unit…
We analyze the Gambler's problem, a simple reinforcement learning problem where the gambler has the chance to double or lose the bets until the target is reached. This is an early example introduced in the reinforcement learning textbook by…