Skip to main content

Approximate Equilibria for Strategic Two Person Games

  • Conference paper
Algorithmic Game Theory (SAGT 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 4997))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

In view of the apparent intractability of constructing Nash Equilibria (NE in short) in polynomial time, even for bimatrix games, understanding the limitations of the approximability of the problem is an important challenge. The purpose of this document is to review a set of results, which have contributed significantly, and currently are the state-of-art with respect to the polynomial time construction of approximate Nash equilibria in bimatrix games. Most of the results discussed here are joint work of the author and of the union of his coauthors in various papers, namely S. Kontogiannis, P. Panagopoulou and H. Tsaknakis.

This work was partially supported by the 6th Framework Programme under contract 001907 (DELIS).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Abbott, T., Kane, D., Valiant, P.: On the complexity of two-player win-lose games. In: Proc. of 46th IEEE Symp. on Found. of Comp. Sci. (FOCS 2005), pp. 113–122 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Althöfer, I.: On sparse approximations to randomized strategies and convex combinations. Linear Algebra and Applications 199, 339–355 (1994)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. Bosse, H., Byrka, J., Markakis, E.: New Algorithms for Approximate Nash Equilibria in Bimatrix Games. In: Deng, X., Graham, F.C. (eds.) WINE 2007. LNCS, vol. 4858, Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Bárány, I., Vempala, S., Vetta, A.: Nash equilibria in random games. In: Proc. of 46th IEEE Symp. on Found. of Comp. Sci. (FOCS 2005), pp. 123–131. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Chen, X., Deng, X.: Settling the complexity of 2-player nash equilibrium. In: Proc. of 47th IEEE Symp on Found of Comp. Sci. (FOCS 2006), pp. 261–272. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Chen, X., Deng, X., Teng, S.: Computing nash equilibria: Approximation and smoothed complexity. In: Proc. of 47th IEEE Symp on Found of Comp Sci (FOCS 2006), pp. 603–612. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Chen, X., Deng, X., Teng, S.: Sparse Games Are Hard. In: Spirakis, P.G., Mavronicolas, M., Kontogiannis, S.C. (eds.) WINE 2006. LNCS, vol. 4286, pp. 262–273. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Conitzer, V., Sandholm, T.: Complexity results about nash equilibria. In: In Proc. of 18th Int Joint Conf on Art. Intel (IJCAI 2003), pp. 765–771. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Daskalakis, C., Goldberg, P., Papadimitriou, C.: The complexity of computing a nash equilibrium. In: Proc. of 38th ACM Symp on Th of Comp (STOC 2006), pp. 71–78 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Daskalakis, C., Mehta, A., Papadimitriou, C.: A Note on Approximate Nash Equilibria. In: Spirakis, P.G., Mavronicolas, M., Kontogiannis, S.C. (eds.) WINE 2006. LNCS, vol. 4286, pp. 297–306. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Daskalakis, C., Mehta, A., Papadimitriou, C.: Progress in approximate nash equilibrium. In: Proc. of 8th ACM Conf. on El. Comm. (EC 2007), pp. 355–358 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Daskalakis, C., Papadimitriou, C.: Three player games are hard. Technical Report TR05-139, Electr. Coll. on Comp. Compl. (ECCC) (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Gilboa, I., Zemel, E.: Nash and correlated equilibria: Some complexity considerations. Games & Econ. Behavior 1, 80–93 (1989)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  14. Goldberg, P., Papadimitriou, C.: Reducibility among equilibrium problems. In: Proc. of 38th ACM Symp. on Th. of Comp. (STOC 2006), pp. 61–70 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Kontogiannis, S.C., Panagopoulou, P., Spirakis, P.G.: Polynomial Algorithms for Approximating Nash Equilibria of Bimatrix Games. In: Spirakis, P.G., Mavronicolas, M., Kontogiannis, S.C. (eds.) WINE 2006. LNCS, vol. 4286, pp. 286–296. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Spirakis, P.G., Kontogiannis, S.C.: Efficient Algorithms for Constant Well Supported Approximate Equilibria in Bimatrix Games. In: Arge, L., Cachin, C., Jurdziński, T., Tarlecki, A. (eds.) ICALP 2007. LNCS, vol. 4596, pp. 595–606. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. Kontogiannis, S.C., Spirakis, P.G.: Well Supported Approximate Equilibria in Bimatrix Games: A Graph Theoretic Approach. In: Kučera, L., Kučera, A. (eds.) MFCS 2007. LNCS, vol. 4708, pp. 596–608. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Lemke, C., Howson, J.T.: Equilibrium points of bimatrix games. Journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics 12:413423, DELIS-TR-0487 (1964)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Lipton, R., Markakis, E., Mehta, A.: Playing large games using simple strategies. In: Proc. of 4th ACM Conf. on El. Comm. (EC 2003), pp. 36–41 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Nash, J.: Noncooperative games. Annals of Mathematics 54, 289–295 (1951)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Papadimitriou, C.: On the complexity of the parity argument and other inefficient proofs of existence. J. Comp. Sys. Sci. 48, 498–532 (1994)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  22. Papadimitriou, C.: Algorithms, games and the internet. In: Proc. of 33rd ACM Symp. on Th. of Comp. (STOC 2001), pp. 749–753 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Sandholm, T., Gilpin, A., Conitzer, V.: Mixed-integer programming methods for finding Nash equilibria. In: Proc. of the 20th Nat. Conf. on Art. Intel (AAAI 2005), pp. 495–501 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Savani, R., von Stengel, B.: Hard-to-solve bimatrix games. Econometrica 74(2), 397–429 (2006)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  25. Tsaknakis, H., Spirakis, P.: An optimization approach for approximate Nash equilibria. In: Deng, X., Graham, F.C. (eds.) WINE 2007. LNCS, vol. 4858, Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Ye, Y.: A fully polynomial time approximation algorithm for computing a stationary point of the general linear complementarity problem. Mathematics of Operations Research 18, 334–345 (1993)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Spirakis, P.G. (2008). Approximate Equilibria for Strategic Two Person Games. In: Monien, B., Schroeder, UP. (eds) Algorithmic Game Theory. SAGT 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4997. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-79309-0_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-79309-0_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-79308-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-79309-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics