组合博弈论是数学与理论计算机科学的一个分支，研究具有完全信息的序贯双人博弈。正规玩法是指无法行动的玩家判负的约定。本文通过离散Richman拍卖（Develin et al. 2010, Larsson et al. 2021, Lazarus et al. 1996），将经典交替正规玩法推广到无穷多个博弈族。我们推广了完美博弈结果的概念，并找到了结果可行性的精确刻画。作为主要结果，我们证明了每个此类结果类都存在一个博弈形式；随后描述了它们的格结构。通过对一般博弈族施加限制，例如无偏性和对称终止，我们发现了与交替玩法的惊人相似之处。
英文摘要：
Combinatorial Game Theory is a branch of mathematics and theoretical computer science that studies sequential 2-player games with perfect information. Normal play is the convention where a player who cannot move loses. Here, we generalize the classical alternating normal play to infinitely many game families, by means of discrete Richman auctions (Develin et al. 2010, Larsson et al. 2021, Lazarus et al. 1996). We generalize the notion of a perfect play outcome, and find an exact characterization of outcome feasibility. As a main result, we prove existence of a game form for each such outcome class; then we describe their lattice structures. By imposing restrictions to the general families, such as impartial and {\em symmetric termination}, we find surprising analogies with alternating play.
We study zero-sum (combinatorial) games, within the framework of so-called Richman auctions (Lazarus et al. 1996) namely, we modify the alternating play scoring ruleset Cumulative Subtraction (CS) (Cohensius et al. 2019), to a discrete bidding scheme (similar to Develin and Payne 2010). Players bid to move and the player with the highest bid wins the move, and hands over the winning bidding amount to the other player. The new game is dubbed Bidding Cumulative Subtraction (BCS). In so-called unitary games, players remove exactly one item out of a single heap of identical items, until the heap i…
In two-player games on graphs, the players move a token through a graph to produce an infinite path, which determines the winner or payoff of the game. We study {\em bidding games} in which the players bid for the right to move the token. Several bidding rules were studied previously. In {\em Richman} bidding, in each round, the players simultaneously submit bids, and the higher bidder moves the token and pays the other player. {\em Poorman} bidding is similar except that the winner of the bidding pays the "bank" rather than the other player. {\em Taxman} bidding spans the spectrum between Ric…
Two-player zero-sum "graph games" are a central model, which proceeds as follows. A token is placed on a vertex of a graph, and the two players move it to produce an infinite "play", which determines the winner or payoff of the game. Traditionally, the players alternate turns in moving the token. In "bidding games", however, the players have budgets and in each turn, an auction (bidding) determines which player moves the token. So far, bidding games have only been studied as full-information games. In this work we initiate the study of partial-information bidding games: we study bidding games …
In a two-player zero-sum graph game the players move a token throughout a graph to produce an infinite path, which determines the winner or payoff of the game. Traditionally, the players alternate turns in moving the token. In {\em bidding games}, however, the players have budgets, and in each turn, we hold an "auction" (bidding) to determine which player moves the token: both players simultaneously submit bids and the higher bidder moves the token. The bidding mechanisms differ in their payment schemes. Bidding games were largely studied with variants of {\em first-price} bidding in which onl…
In two-player games on graphs, the players move a token through a graph to produce an infinite path, which determines the winner or payoff of the game. Such games are central in formal verification since they model the interaction between a non-terminating system and its environment. We study {\em bidding games} in which the players bid for the right to move the token. Two bidding rules have been defined. In {\em Richman} bidding, in each round, the players simultaneously submit bids, and the higher bidder moves the token and pays the other player. {\em Poorman} bidding is similar except that …
Richman games are zero-sum games, where in each turn players bid in order to determine who will play next [Lazarus et al.'99]. We extend the theory to impartial general-sum two player games called \emph{bidding games}, showing the existence of pure subgame-perfect equilibria (PSPE). In particular, we show that PSPEs form a semilattice, with a unique and natural \emph{Bottom Equilibrium}. Our main result shows that if only two actions available to the players in each node, then the Bottom Equilibrium has additional properties: (a) utilities are monotone in budget; (b) every outcome is Pareto-ef…
Two-player games on graphs are widely studied in formal methods as they model the interaction between a system and its environment. The game is played by moving a token throughout a graph to produce an infinite path. There are several common modes to determine how the players move the token through the graph; e.g., in turn-based games the players alternate turns in moving the token. We study the {\em bidding} mode of moving the token, which, to the best of our knowledge, has never been studied in infinite-duration games. The following bidding rule was previously defined and called Richman bidd…
We study a class of manipulations in combinatorial auctions where bidders fundamentally misrepresent what goods they are interested in. Prior work has largely assumed that bidders only submit bids on their bundles of interest, which we call simple bidding: strategizing over the bid amounts, but not the bundle identities. However, we show that there exists an entire class of auction instances for which simple bids are never optimal in Bayes-Nash equilibrium, always being strictly dominated by complex bids (where bidders bid on goods they are not interested in). We show this result for the two m…
Bidding Games on Markov Decision Processes with Quantitative Reachability Objectives
University of Haifa（海法大学）；Masaryk University（马萨里克大学）；Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA)（奥地利科学技术研究所）；IMDEA Software Institute（IMDEA软件研究所）
IST Austria（奥地利科学技术研究所）；Liverpool University（利物浦大学）
In this paper we introduce and study {\em all-pay bidding games}, a class of two player, zero-sum games on graphs. The game proceeds as follows. We place a token on some vertex in the graph and assign budgets to the two players. Each turn, each player submits a sealed legal bid (non-negative and below their remaining budget), which is deducted from their budget and the highest bidder moves the token onto an adjacent vertex. The game ends once a sink is reached, and \PO pays \PT the outcome that is associated with the sink. The players attempt to maximize their expected outcome. Our games model…
We study risk-free bidding strategies in combinatorial auctions with incomplete information. Specifically, what is the maximum profit that a complement-free (subadditive) bidder can guarantee in a multi-item combinatorial auction? Suppose there are $n$ bidders and $B_i$ is the value that bidder $i$ has for the entire set of items. We study the above problem from the perspective of the first bidder, Bidder~1. In this setting, the worst case profit guarantees arise in a duopsony, that is when $n=2$, so this problem then corresponds to playing an auction against a budgeted adversary with budget $…
Bid optimization for online advertising from single advertiser's perspective has been thoroughly investigated in both academic research and industrial practice. However, existing work typically assume competitors do not change their bids, i.e., the wining price is fixed, leading to poor performance of the derived solution. Although a few studies use multi-agent reinforcement learning to set up a cooperative game, they still suffer the following drawbacks: (1) They fail to avoid collusion solutions where all the advertisers involved in an auction collude to bid an extremely low price on purpose…
The connection between games and no-regret algorithms has been widely studied in the literature. A fundamental result is that when all players play no-regret strategies, this produces a sequence of actions whose time-average is a coarse-correlated equilibrium of the game. However, much less is known about equilibrium selection in the case that multiple equilibria exist. In this work, we study the convergence of no-regret bidding algorithms in auctions. Besides being of theoretical interest, bidding dynamics in auctions is an important question from a practical viewpoint as well. We study repea…
The Bidding Games: Reinforcement Learning for MEV Extraction on Polygon Blockchain
Independent Researcher（独立研究者）；Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology（莫斯科物理技术学院）；Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology（斯克尔科沃科学与技术研究所）；HSE University（俄罗斯伏尔加格勒国立高等经济大学）
In a combinatorial auction with item bidding, agents participate in multiple single-item second-price auctions at once. As some items might be substitutes, agents need to strategize in order to maximize their utilities. A number of results indicate that high welfare can be achieved this way, giving bounds on the welfare at equilibrium. Recently, however, criticism has been raised that equilibria are hard to compute and therefore unlikely to be attained. In this paper, we take a different perspective. We study simple best-response dynamics. That is, agents are activated one after the other and …
Spot electricity markets are considered under a Game-Theoretic framework, where risk averse players submit orders to the market clearing mechanism to maximise their own utility. Consistent with the current practice in Europe, the market clearing mechanism is modelled as a Social Welfare Maximisation problem, with zonal pricing, and we consider inflexible demand, physical constraints of the electricity grid, and capacity-constrained producers. A novel type of non-parametric risk aversion based on a defined worst case scenario is introduced, and this reduces the dimensionality of the strategy va…
Financial transmission right (FTR) is an important tool and an especially feature for stopping congestion charges in restructured electricity markets. Participants in the transmission market as players are assumed to be a generation company (Gencos) which also take part in an energy market and able to buy their require FTRs. In this regard, there are two types of FTR: obligation or option. There are three main questions which immediately arise for each player who is placed in the market. First, which type of FTR is the best choice second, how much power is needed to generate by each player and…
The security game is a basic model for resource allocation in adversarial environments. Here there are two players, a defender and an attacker. The defender wants to allocate her limited resources to defend critical targets and the attacker seeks his most favorable target to attack. In the past decade, there has been a surge of research interest in analyzing and solving security games that are motivated by applications from various domains. This paper examines security games from a theoretical perspective and provides a unified view of various security game models. In particular, each security…
In this paper, we propose a Quantum variation of combinatorial games, generalizing the Quantum Tic-Tac-Toe proposed by Allan Goff. A combinatorial game is a two-player game with no chance and no hidden information, such as Go or Chess. In this paper, we consider the possibility of playing superpositions of moves in such games. We propose different rulesets depending on when superposed moves should be played, and prove that all these rulesets may lead similar games to different outcomes. We then consider Quantum variations of the game of Nim. We conclude with some discussion on the relative int…
