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The sim-to-real gap, where agents trained in a simulator face significant performance degradation during testing, is a fundamental challenge in reinforcement learning. Extansive works adopt the framework of distributionally robust RL, to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-12 Zewu Zheng , Yuanyuan Lin

This paper considers the challenging tasks of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) under partial observability, where each agent only sees her own individual observations and actions that reveal incomplete information about the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Qinghua Liu , Csaba Szepesvári , Chi Jin

We study the problem of estimating the optimal Q-function of $\gamma$-discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the synchronous setting, where independent samples for all state-action pairs are drawn from a generative model at each…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-27 Mohammad Boveiri , Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani

In this work, we study the sample complexity of obtaining a Nash equilibrium (NE) estimate in two-player zero-sum matrix games with noisy feedback. Specifically, we propose a novel algorithm that repeatedly solves linear programs (LPs) to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-16 Jiashuo Jiang , Mengxiao Zhang

We consider two-player zero-sum stochastic games and propose a two-timescale $Q$-learning algorithm with function approximation that is payoff-based, convergent, rational, and symmetric between the two players. In two-timescale…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-11 Zaiwei Chen , Kaiqing Zhang , Eric Mazumdar , Asuman Ozdaglar , Adam Wierman

Recently, model-free reinforcement learning has attracted research attention due to its simplicity, memory and computation efficiency, and the flexibility to combine with function approximation. In this paper, we propose Exploration…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-10 Mehdi Jafarnia-Jahromi , Chen-Yu Wei , Rahul Jain , Haipeng Luo

Learning from repeated play in a fixed two-player zero-sum game is a classic problem in game theory and online learning. We consider a variant of this problem where the game payoff matrix changes over time, possibly in an adversarial…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-01 Mengxiao Zhang , Peng Zhao , Haipeng Luo , Zhi-Hua Zhou

In this paper, we consider the problem of optimization and learning for constrained and multi-objective Markov decision processes, for both discounted rewards and expected average rewards. We formulate the problems as zero-sum games where…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-05 Ather Gattami , Qinbo Bai , Vaneet Agarwal

We study online optimization methods for zero-sum games, a fundamental problem in adversarial learning in machine learning, economics, and many other domains. Traditional methods approximate Nash equilibria (NE) using either regret-based…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-07-16 Taemin Kim , James P. Bailey

We consider the problem of decentralized multi-agent reinforcement learning in Markov games. A fundamental question is whether there exist algorithms that, when adopted by all agents and run independently in a decentralized fashion, lead to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-23 Dylan J. Foster , Noah Golowich , Sham M. Kakade

We consider model-free reinforcement learning for infinite-horizon discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with a continuous state space and unknown transition kernel, when only a single sample path under an arbitrary policy of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-24 Devavrat Shah , Qiaomin Xie

Learning by experience in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) is a difficult and exciting task, due to the lack of stationarity of the environment, whose dynamics evolves as the population learns. In order to design scalable algorithms for systems…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-24 Romuald Elie , Julien Pérolat , Mathieu Laurière , Matthieu Geist , Olivier Pietquin

We study what dataset assumption permits solving offline two-player zero-sum Markov games. In stark contrast to the offline single-agent Markov decision process, we show that the single strategy concentration assumption is insufficient for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-17 Qiwen Cui , Simon S. Du

In an episodic Markov Decision Process (MDP) problem, an online algorithm chooses from a set of actions in a sequence of $H$ trials, where $H$ is the episode length, in order to maximize the total payoff of the chosen actions. Q-learning,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-11 Xu Zhu

In this paper, we consider two-player zero-sum matrix and stochastic games and develop learning dynamics that are payoff-based, convergent, rational, and symmetric between the two players. Specifically, the learning dynamics for matrix…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-06 Zaiwei Chen , Kaiqing Zhang , Eric Mazumdar , Asuman Ozdaglar , Adam Wierman

Existing studies on provably efficient algorithms for Markov games (MGs) almost exclusively build on the "optimism in the face of uncertainty" (OFU) principle. This work focuses on a different approach of posterior sampling, which is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-06 Wei Xiong , Han Zhong , Chengshuai Shi , Cong Shen , Tong Zhang

We motivate and propose a new model for non-cooperative Markov game which considers the interactions of risk-aware players. This model characterizes the time-consistent dynamic "risk" from both stochastic state transitions (inherent to the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-11-22 Wenjie Huang , Pham Viet Hai , William B. Haskell

Model-free reinforcement learning is known to be memory and computation efficient and more amendable to large scale problems. In this paper, two model-free algorithms are introduced for learning infinite-horizon average-reward Markov…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-26 Chen-Yu Wei , Mehdi Jafarnia-Jahromi , Haipeng Luo , Hiteshi Sharma , Rahul Jain

We consider the problem of minimizing a smooth convex function by reducing the optimization to computing the Nash equilibrium of a particular zero-sum convex-concave game. Zero-sum games can be solved using online learning dynamics, where a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-16 Jun-Kun Wang , Jacob Abernethy

Contemporary applications of machine learning in two-team e-sports and the superior expressivity of multi-agent generative adversarial networks raise important and overlooked theoretical questions regarding optimization in two-team games.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-04-18 Fivos Kalogiannis , Ioannis Panageas , Emmanouil-Vasileios Vlatakis-Gkaragkounis