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Symmetric Strategy Improvement

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Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9135))

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Abstract

Symmetry is inherent in the definition of most of the two-player zero-sum games, including parity, mean-payoff, and discounted-payoff games. It is therefore quite surprising that no symmetric analysis techniques for these games exist. We develop a novel symmetric strategy improvement algorithm where, in each iteration, the strategies of both players are improved simultaneously. We show that symmetric strategy improvement defies Friedmann’s traps, which shook the belief in the potential of classic strategy improvement to be polynomial.

The work has been done while the second author was visiting the University of Liverpool supported by a Liverpool India Fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Sven Schewe & Thomas Varghese

  2. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Ashutosh Trivedi

Authors
  1. Sven Schewe
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  2. Ashutosh Trivedi
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  3. Thomas Varghese
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sven Schewe .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Magnús M. Halldórsson

  2. Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Kazuo Iwama

  3. The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Naoki Kobayashi

  4. Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Bettina Speckmann

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Schewe, S., Trivedi, A., Varghese, T. (2015). Symmetric Strategy Improvement. In: Halldórsson, M., Iwama, K., Kobayashi, N., Speckmann, B. (eds) Automata, Languages, and Programming. ICALP 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9135. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47666-6_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47666-6_31

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-47665-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-47666-6

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