Reduced Space and Faster Convergence in Imperfect-Information Games via Pruning

Abstract

Iterative algorithms such as Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR) are the most popular way to solve large zero-sum imperfect-information games. In this paper we introduce Best-Response Pruning (BRP), an improvement to iterative algorithms such as CFR that allows poorly-performing actions to be temporarily pruned. We prove that when using CFR in zero-sum games, adding BRP will asymptotically prune any action that is not part of a best response to some Nash equilibrium. This leads to provably faster convergence and lower space requirements. Experiments show that BRP results in a factor of 7 reduction in space, and the reduction factor increases with game size.

Cite

Text

Brown and Sandholm. "Reduced Space and Faster Convergence in Imperfect-Information Games via Pruning." International Conference on Machine Learning, 2017.

Markdown

[Brown and Sandholm. "Reduced Space and Faster Convergence in Imperfect-Information Games via Pruning." International Conference on Machine Learning, 2017.](https://mlanthology.org/icml/2017/brown2017icml-reduced/)

BibTeX

@inproceedings{brown2017icml-reduced,
  title     = {{Reduced Space and Faster Convergence in Imperfect-Information Games via Pruning}},
  author    = {Brown, Noam and Sandholm, Tuomas},
  booktitle = {International Conference on Machine Learning},
  year      = {2017},
  pages     = {596-604},
  volume    = {70},
  url       = {https://mlanthology.org/icml/2017/brown2017icml-reduced/}
}