English

Simple approximate equilibria in games with many players

Computer Science and Game Theory 2017-01-30 v1

Abstract

We consider ϵ\epsilon-equilibria notions for constant value of ϵ\epsilon in nn-player mm-actions games where mm is a constant. We focus on the following question: What is the largest grid size over the mixed strategies such that ϵ\epsilon-equilibrium is guaranteed to exist over this grid. For Nash equilibrium, we prove that constant grid size (that depends on ϵ\epsilon and mm, but not on nn) is sufficient to guarantee existence of weak approximate equilibrium. This result implies a polynomial (in the input) algorithm for weak approximate equilibrium. For approximate Nash equilibrium we introduce a closely related question and prove its \emph{equivalence} to the well-known Beck-Fiala conjecture from discrepancy theory. To the best of our knowledge this is the first result introduces a connection between game theory and discrepancy theory. For correlated equilibrium, we prove a O(1logn)O(\frac{1}{\log n}) lower-bound on the grid size, which matches the known upper bound of Ω(1logn)\Omega(\frac{1}{\log n}). Our result implies an Ω(logn)\Omega(\log n) lower bound on the rate of convergence of dynamics (any dynamic) to approximate correlated (and coarse correlated) equilibrium. Again, this lower bound matches the O(logn)O(\log n) upper bound that is achieved by regret minimizing algorithms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1701.07956,
  title  = {Simple approximate equilibria in games with many players},
  author = {Itai Arieli and Yakov Babichenko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.07956},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:02:10.181Z