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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

We present a new family of min-max optimization algorithms that automatically exploit the geometry of the gradient data observed at earlier iterations to perform more informative extra-gradient steps in later ones. Thanks to this adaptation…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-11-20 Kimon Antonakopoulos , E. Veronica Belmega , Panayotis Mertikopoulos

Zero-sum Markov Stackelberg games can be used to model myriad problems, in domains ranging from economics to human robot interaction. In this paper, we develop policy gradient methods that solve these games in continuous state and action…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-01-24 Denizalp Goktas , Arjun Prakash , Amy Greenwald

Motivated by applications in Game Theory, Optimization, and Generative Adversarial Networks, recent work of Daskalakis et al \cite{DISZ17} and follow-up work of Liang and Stokes \cite{LiangS18} have established that a variant of the widely…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-30 Constantinos Daskalakis , Ioannis Panageas

In decision-dependent games, multiple players optimize their decisions under a data distribution that shifts with their joint actions, creating complex dynamics in applications like market pricing. A practical consequence of these dynamics…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-04 Guangzheng Zhong , Yang Liu , Jiming Liu

Delays and asynchrony are inevitable in large-scale machine-learning problems where communication plays a key role. As such, several works have extensively analyzed stochastic optimization with delayed gradients. However, as far as we are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-28 Arman Adibi , Aritra Mitra , Hamed Hassani

We consider the problem of efficiently learning to play single-leader multi-follower Stackelberg games when the leader lacks knowledge of the lower-level game. Such games arise in hierarchical decision-making problems involving…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-11 Anna Maddux , Marko Maljkovic , Nikolas Geroliminis , Maryam Kamgarpour

Many modern machine learning algorithms such as generative adversarial networks (GANs) and adversarial training can be formulated as minimax optimization. Gradient descent ascent (GDA) is the most commonly used algorithm due to its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-01 Huan He , Shifan Zhao , Yuanzhe Xi , Joyce C Ho , Yousef Saad

In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for minimax optimization problems that are nonconvex in one variable and strongly-concave in the other variable. Such minimax optimization problems have attracted significant attention lately…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-06 Zhongruo Wang , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Shiqian Ma , Meisam Razaviyayn

Stackelberg games are a classic example of bilevel optimization problems, which are often encountered in game theory and economics. These are complex problems with a hierarchical structure, where one optimization task is nested within the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-07-25 Ankur Sinha , Pekka Malo , Anton Frantsev , Kalyanmoy Deb

We study the convergence to local Nash equilibria of gradient methods for two-player zero-sum differentiable games. It is well-known that such dynamics converge locally when $S \succ 0$ and may diverge when $S=0$, where $S\succeq 0$ is the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-08 Guillaume Wang , Lénaïc Chizat

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

We consider the problem of computing mixed Nash equilibria of two-player zero-sum games with continuous sets of pure strategies and with first-order access to the payoff function. This problem arises for example in game-theory-inspired…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-04 Guillaume Wang , Lénaïc Chizat

We consider differentiable games where the goal is to find a Nash equilibrium. The machine learning community has recently started using variants of the gradient method (GD). Prime examples are extragradient (EG), the optimistic gradient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-08 Waïss Azizian , Ioannis Mitliagkas , Simon Lacoste-Julien , Gauthier Gidel

Stackelberg Games are gaining importance in the last years due to the raise of Adversarial Machine Learning (AML). Within this context, a new paradigm must be faced: in classical game theory, intervening agents were humans whose decisions…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-10-25 Roi Naveiro , David Ríos Insua

Continuous games are multiplayer games in which strategy sets are compact and utility functions are continuous. These games typically have a highly complicated structure of Nash equilibria, and numerical methods for the equilibrium…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-07-12 T. Kroupa , T. Votroubek

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 study the minimax optimization problem in the smooth and strongly convex-strongly concave setting when we have access to noisy estimates of gradients. In particular, we first analyze the stochastic Gradient Descent Ascent…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-14 Alireza Fallah , Asuman Ozdaglar , Sarath Pattathil

Many tasks in modern machine learning can be formulated as finding equilibria in \emph{sequential} games. In particular, two-player zero-sum sequential games, also known as minimax optimization, have received growing interest. It is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-26 Yuanhao Wang , Guodong Zhang , Jimmy Ba

The cornerstone underpinning deep learning is the guarantee that gradient descent on an objective converges to local minima. Unfortunately, this guarantee fails in settings, such as generative adversarial nets, where there are multiple…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-07 David Balduzzi , Sebastien Racaniere , James Martens , Jakob Foerster , Karl Tuyls , Thore Graepel