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Related papers: The Power of Regularization in Solving Extensive-F…

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Reverse Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence-based regularization with respect to a fixed reference policy is widely used in modern reinforcement learning to preserve the desired traits of the reference policy and sometimes to promote…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Anupam Nayak , Tong Yang , Osman Yagan , Gauri Joshi , Yuejie Chi

This paper studies the optimistic variant of Fictitious Play for learning in two-player zero-sum games. While it is known that Optimistic FTRL -- a regularized algorithm with a bounded stepsize parameter -- obtains constant regret in this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-15 John Lazarsfeld , Georgios Piliouras , Ryann Sim , Stratis Skoulakis

Regret minimization is a powerful tool for solving large-scale extensive-form games. State-of-the-art methods rely on minimizing regret locally at each decision point. In this work we derive a new framework for regret minimization on…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-09-11 Gabriele Farina , Christian Kroer , Tuomas Sandholm

Hindsight rationality is an approach to playing general-sum games that prescribes no-regret learning dynamics for individual agents with respect to a set of deviations, and further describes jointly rational behavior among multiple agents…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-06-24 Dustin Morrill , Ryan D'Orazio , Marc Lanctot , James R. Wright , Michael Bowling , Amy Greenwald

The CFR framework has been a powerful tool for solving large-scale extensive-form games in practice. However, the theoretical rate at which past CFR-based algorithms converge to the Nash equilibrium is on the order of $O(T^{-1/2})$, where…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-02-14 Gabriele Farina , Christian Kroer , Noam Brown , Tuomas Sandholm

Self-play methods based on regret minimization have become the state of the art for computing Nash equilibria in large two-players zero-sum extensive-form games. These methods fundamentally rely on the hierarchical structure of the players'…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-10-29 Gabriele Farina , Chun Kai Ling , Fei Fang , Tuomas Sandholm

A dominant approach to solving large imperfect-information games is Counterfactural Regret Minimization (CFR). In CFR, many regret minimization problems are combined to solve the game. For very large games, abstraction is typically needed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-02 Ryan D'Orazio , Dustin Morrill , James R. Wright

An $\alpha$-potential game is a multi-player non-cooperative interaction in which a global potential function approximates individual player rewards up to a structural bias $\alpha$. While identifying a Nash Equilibrium (NE) in generic…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Claire Chen , Yuheng Zhang

We present new policy mirror descent (PMD) methods for solving reinforcement learning (RL) problems with either strongly convex or general convex regularizers. By exploring the structural properties of these overall highly nonconvex…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-08 Guanghui Lan

In general, two-agent decision-making problems can be modeled as a two-player game, and a typical solution is to find a Nash equilibrium in such game. Counterfactual regret minimization (CFR) is a well-known method to find a Nash…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-12-07 Huale Li , Xuan Wang , Shuhan Qi , Jiajia Zhang , Yang Liu , Yulin Wu , Fengwei Jia

Coordinate descent methods are popular in machine learning and optimization for their simple sparse updates and excellent practical performance. In the context of large-scale sequential game solving, these same properties would be…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-08-01 Darshan Chakrabarti , Jelena Diakonikolas , Christian Kroer

Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR) and its variants developed based upon Regret Matching (RM) have been considered to be the best method to solve incomplete information extensive form games. In addition to RM and CFR, Fictitious Play…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-11-14 Qi Ju

Self-play via online learning is one of the premier ways to solve large-scale two-player zero-sum games, both in theory and practice. Particularly popular algorithms include optimistic multiplicative weights update (OMWU) and optimistic…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-01-22 Yang Cai , Gabriele Farina , Julien Grand-Clément , Christian Kroer , Chung-Wei Lee , Haipeng Luo , Weiqiang Zheng

In this paper, we establish efficient and uncoupled learning dynamics so that, when employed by all players in multiplayer perfect-recall imperfect-information extensive-form games, the trigger regret of each player grows as $O(\log T)$…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-09-20 Ioannis Anagnostides , Gabriele Farina , Tuomas Sandholm

The extensive-form game has been studied considerably in recent years. It can represent games with multiple decision points and incomplete information, and hence it is helpful in formulating games with uncertain inputs, such as poker. We…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-03-21 Keigo Habara , Ellen Hidemi Fukuda , Nobuo Yamashita

Regret minimization has proved to be a versatile tool for tree-form sequential decision making and extensive-form games. In large two-player zero-sum imperfect-information games, modern extensions of counterfactual regret minimization (CFR)…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-03-09 Gabriele Farina , Tuomas Sandholm

On-line linear optimization on combinatorial action sets (d-dimensional actions) with bandit feedback, is known to have complexity in the order of the dimension of the problem. The exponential weighted strategy achieves the best known…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-10-01 Shaona Ghosh , Adam Prugel-Bennett

Policy optimization, which finds the desired policy by maximizing value functions via optimization techniques, lies at the heart of reinforcement learning (RL). In addition to value maximization, other practical considerations arise as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-12 Wenhao Zhan , Shicong Cen , Baihe Huang , Yuxin Chen , Jason D. Lee , Yuejie Chi

We study three families of online convex optimization algorithms: follow-the-proximally-regularized-leader (FTRL-Proximal), regularized dual averaging (RDA), and composite-objective mirror descent. We first prove equivalence theorems that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2011-09-21 H. Brendan McMahan

A considerable chasm has been looming for decades between theory and practice in zero-sum game solving through first-order methods. Although a convergence rate of $T^{-1}$ has long been established, the most effective paradigm in practice…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Brian Hu Zhang , Ioannis Anagnostides , Tuomas Sandholm