English

Two Sequence-Form Interior-Point Differentiable Path-Following Method to Compute Nash Equilibria

Computer Science and Game Theory 2026-04-15 v1

Abstract

Nash equilibrium is a fundamental solution concept in extensive-form games, while its efficient computation is still far from straightforward. This paper considers finite nn-player extensive-form games with perfect recall under the sequence-form representation. Unlike existing approaches, which mainly treat the sequence form as a compact computational reformulation, we develop a direct sequence-form definition of Nash equilibrium. Building on this, we rigorously establish the associated sequence-form Nash equilibrium system through an equivalence proof with mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium. On this basis, we propose a single-stage interior-point differentiable path-following method for equilibrium computation. The method uses logarithmic-barrier regularization to generate a differentiable equilibrium path in the interior of the realization-plan space, leading to favorable numerical stability and convergence properties. Numerical results show that the proposed method is effective and computationally efficient.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.12558,
  title  = {Two Sequence-Form Interior-Point Differentiable Path-Following Method to Compute Nash Equilibria},
  author = {Yuqing Hou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.12558},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:08:30.363Z