Related papers: Randomness and early termination: what makes a gam…
Motivated by a problem posed by Aldous, our goal is to find the maximal-entropy win-martingale: In a sports game between two teams, the chance the home team wins is initially $x_0 \in (0,1)$ and finally 0 or 1. As an idealization we take a…
We consider a competition between $d+1$ players, and aim to identify the "most exciting game'' of this kind. This is translated, mathematically, into a stochastic optimization problem over martingales that live on the $d$-dimensional…
Within a contest there is some probability M_i(t) that contestant i will be the winner, given information available at time t, and M_i(t) must be a martingale in t. Assume continuous paths, to capture the idea that relevant information is…
Bertrand et al. [1] (LMCS 2019) describe two-player zero-sum games in which one player tries to achieve a reachability objective in $n$ games (on the same finite arena) simultaneously by broadcasting actions, and where the opponent has full…
We introduce a novel notion of divergence between continuous martingales; the reciprocal specific relative entropy. First, we motivate this definition from multiple perspectives. Thereafter, we solve the reciprocal specific relative entropy…
We study a robust optimal stopping problem with respect to a set $\cP$ of mutually singular probabilities. This can be interpreted as a zero-sum controller-stopper game in which the stopper is trying to maximize its pay-off while an adverse…
Consider a rooted Galton-Watson tree $T$, to each of whose edges we assign, independently, a weight that equals $+1$ with probability $p_{1}$, $0$ with probability $p_{0}$ and $-1$ with probability $p_{-1}=1-p_{1}-p_{0}$. We play a game on…
We study the joint laws of a continuous, uniformly integrable martingale, its maximum, and its minimum. In particular, we give explicit martingale inequalities which provide upper and lower bounds on the joint exit probabilities of a…
Termination is one of the basic liveness properties, and we study the termination problem for probabilistic programs with real-valued variables. Previous works focused on the qualitative problem that asks whether an input program terminates…
We investigate multi-round team competitions between two teams, where each team selects one of its players simultaneously in each round and each player can play at most once. The competition defines an extensive-form game with perfect…
We study the termination problem for nondeterministic recursive probabilistic programs. First, we show that a ranking-supermartingales-based approach is both sound and complete for bounded terminiation (i.e., bounded expected termination…
We consider simple stochastic games with terminal-node rewards and multiple players, who have differing perceptions of risk. Specifically, we study risk-sensitive equilibria (RSEs), where no player can improve their perceived reward --…
We consider graph games of infinite duration with winning conditions in parameterized linear temporal logic, where the temporal operators are equipped with variables for time bounds. In model checking such specifications were introduced as…
We obtain the first probabilistic proof of continuous differentiability of time-dependent optimal boundaries in optimal stopping problems. The underlying stochastic dynamics is a one-dimensional, time-inhomogeneous diffusion. The gain…
We study the almost-sure termination problem for probabilistic programs. First, we show that supermartingales with lower bounds on conditional absolute difference provide a sound approach for the almost-sure termination problem. Moreover,…
We introduce a betting game, where the gambler aims to guess the last success epoch from past observed data. The player may bet on the event that no further successes occur, or choose a `trap' which is any span of future times. In the…
We offer some theorems, mainly of finiteness, for certain patterns in elliptical billiards, related to periodic trajectories. For instance, if two players hit a ball at a given position and with directions forming a fixed angle in…
We obtain bounds on the distribution of the maximum of a martingale with fixed marginals at finitely many intermediate times. The bounds are sharp and attained by a solution to $n$-marginal Skorokhod embedding problem in Ob{\l}\'oj and…
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…
We consider a Bradley-Terry model in random environment where each player faces each other once. More precisely the strengths of the players are assumed to be random and we study the influence of their distributions on the asymptotic number…