Simultaneous move games where all the player have to take their actions simultaneously are a class of games in general game playing. In this paper we analyze how UCT performs in this class of games. We argue that UCT does not converge to a Nash equilibrium in general and the situation that it converges to can be exploited. We also analyze CFR (CounterFactual Regret) and show how it can be used ...

Alpha-Beta pruning is one of the most powerful and fundamental MiniMax search improvements. It was designed for sequential two-player zero-sum perfect information games. In this paper we introduce an Alpha-Beta-like sound pruning method for the more general class of “stacked matrix games” that allow for simultaneous moves by both players. This is accomplished by maintaining upper and lower boun...

Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is currently the most popular game playing algorithm for perfect-information extensive-form games. Its adaptation led, for example, to human expert level Go playing programs or substantial improvement of solvers for domain-independent automated planning. Inspired by this success, researchers started to adapt this technique also for imperfect-information games. Imp...

We consider partial bandwagon properties in the context of coordination games to capture the idea of weak network externalities. We then study a local interactions model where agents play a coordination game following a noisy best-reply process. We identify conditions such that Globally Pairwise Risk Dominant strategies are selected. Examples include arbitrary 3× 3 coordination games and n×n su...

As they are conventionally formulated, Boolean games assume that players make their choices in ignorance of the choices being made by other players – they are games of simultaneous moves. For many settings, this is clearly unrealistic. In this paper, we show how Boolean games can be enriched by dependency graphs which explicitly represent the informational dependencies between variables in a ga...

Low cost networked consumer electronics (CE) are widely used. Various applications are offered, including IPTV, VoIP, VoD, PVR and games. At the same time the requirements of computer games by means of CPU and graphics performance are continuously growing. For pervasive gaming in various environments like at home, hotels, or internet cafes, it is beneficial to run games also on mobile devices a...

Discrete-time stochastic games with a finite number of states have been widely applied to study the strategic interactions among forward-looking players in dynamic environments. The model as written down by Ericson & Pakes (1995), Pakes & McGuire (1994, 2001) (hereafter, EP, PM1, and PM2), the subsequent literature (e.g., Gowrisankaran 1999, Fershtman & Pakes 2000, Benkard 2004), and in standar...