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Related papers: On Last-Iterate Convergence Beyond Zero-Sum Games

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A seminal result in game theory is von Neumann's minmax theorem, which states that zero-sum games admit an essentially unique equilibrium solution. Classical learning results build on this theorem to show that online no-regret dynamics…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-11-08 Tanner Fiez , Ryann Sim , Stratis Skoulakis , Georgios Piliouras , Lillian Ratliff

We design and analyze minimax-optimal algorithms for online linear optimization games where the player's choice is unconstrained. The player strives to minimize regret, the difference between his loss and the loss of a post-hoc benchmark…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-02-12 H. Brendan McMahan

We study two-player zero-sum stochastic games, and propose a form of independent learning dynamics called Doubly Smoothed Best-Response dynamics, which integrates a discrete and doubly smoothed variant of the best-response dynamics into…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-03-07 Zaiwei Chen , Kaiqing Zhang , Eric Mazumdar , Asuman Ozdaglar , Adam Wierman

No-regret learning has emerged as a powerful tool for solving extensive-form games. This was facilitated by the counterfactual-regret minimization (CFR) framework, which relies on the instantiation of regret minimizers for simplexes at each…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-11-10 Gabriele Farina , Christian Kroer , Tuomas Sandholm

In this work, we study potential games and Markov potential games under stochastic cost and bandit feedback. We propose a variant of the Frank-Wolfe algorithm with sufficient exploration and recursive gradient estimation, which provably…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-04-11 Jing Dong , Baoxiang Wang , Yaoliang Yu

This paper studies online optimization from a high-level unified theoretical perspective. We not only generalize both Optimistic-DA and Optimistic-MD in normed vector space, but also unify their analysis methods for dynamic regret. Regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Qing-xin Meng , Jian-wei Liu

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

Partial-monitoring games constitute a mathematical framework for sequential decision making problems with imperfect feedback: The learner repeatedly chooses an action, opponent responds with an outcome, and then the learner suffers a loss…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2011-10-13 András Antos , Gábor Bartók , Dávid Pál , Csaba Szepesvári

Motivated by Generative Adversarial Networks, we study the computation of Nash equilibrium in concave network zero-sum games (NZSGs), a multiplayer generalization of two-player zero-sum games first proposed with linear payoffs. Extending…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-13 Amit Kadan , Hu Fu

Consider a scenario where a player chooses an action in each round $t$ out of $T$ rounds and observes the incurred cost after a delay of $d_{t}$ rounds. The cost functions and the delay sequence are chosen by an adversary. We show that in a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-16 Ilai Bistritz , Zhengyuan Zhou , Xi Chen , Nicholas Bambos , Jose Blanchet

The Competing Bandits framework is a recently emerging area that integrates multi-armed bandits in online learning with stable matching in game theory. While conventional models assume that all players and arms are constantly available, in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-23 Shinnosuke Uba , Yutaro Yamaguchi

We consider online learning for episodic stochastically constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), which plays a central role in ensuring the safety of reinforcement learning. Here the loss function can vary arbitrarily across the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-19 Shuang Qiu , Xiaohan Wei , Zhuoran Yang , Jieping Ye , Zhaoran Wang

We propose the first model-free algorithm that achieves low regret performance for decentralized learning in two-player zero-sum tabular stochastic games with infinite-horizon average-reward objective. In decentralized learning, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-16 Romain Cravic , Nicolas Gast , Bruno Gaujal

We present an algorithm based on the \emph{Optimism in the Face of Uncertainty} (OFU) principle which is able to learn Reinforcement Learning (RL) modeled by Markov decision process (MDP) with finite state-action space efficiently. By…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-01 Zihan Zhang , Xiangyang Ji

Characterizing the performance of no-regret dynamics in multi-player games is a foundational problem at the interface of online learning and game theory. Recent results have revealed that when all players adopt specific learning algorithms,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-11-28 Ioannis Anagnostides , Alkis Kalavasis , Tuomas Sandholm , Manolis Zampetakis

In this paper, we propose a provably convergent and practical framework for multi-objective reinforcement learning with max-min criterion. From a game-theoretic perspective, we reformulate max-min multi-objective reinforcement learning as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Woohyeon Byeon , Giseung Park , Jongseong Chae , Amir Leshem , Youngchul Sung

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has been highly successful in aligning large language models with human preferences. While prevalent methods like DPO have demonstrated strong performance, they frame interactions with the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Yongtao Wu , Luca Viano , Yihang Chen , Zhenyu Zhu , Kimon Antonakopoulos , Quanquan Gu , Volkan Cevher

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

Learning to play zero-sum games is a fundamental problem in game theory and machine learning. While significant progress has been made in minimizing external regret in the self-play settings or with full-information feedback, real-world…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-09 Shinji Ito , Haipeng Luo , Arnab Maiti , Taira Tsuchiya , Yue Wu

The study of convex optimization has historically been concerned with worst-case convergence rates. The development of the Optimized Gradient Method (OGM), due to \citet{drori2012PerformanceOF,Kim2016optimal}, marked a major milestone in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-21 Benjamin Grimmer , Kevin Shu , Alex L. Wang