arXiv:2609.37447v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: How strong can an AlphaZero-style chess system become under limited training compute when its entire learning loop is engineered for efficiency? We t...
By Bertil Braun
arXiv:2607. 08984v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: AlphaZero has demonstrated that a neural-guided Monte Carlo Tree Search can achieve superhuman performance, but strong play does not necessarily imply perfect play.
By Brent Kong, Tejas Ram, Tony Yue Yu
arXiv:2605.08982v4 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is a widely used approach for policy improvement and action selection in Reinforcement Learning. Due to its sequenti...
By Yaniv Oren, Viliam Vadocz, Joery A. de Vries, Wendelin B\"ohmer, Matthijs T. J. Spaan, Hendrik Baier
The paper introduces a robust variant of Monte Carlo Tree Search that addresses ambiguities in transition dynamics and reward distributions, bridging the gap between simulation-based planning and real-world deployment. It incorporates a robust power mean backup operator and exploration bonuses to guarantee finite-sample convergence at every node, achieving an ≠O(n−1/2) convergence rate for root value estimation comparable to standard MCTS. Empirical results demonstrate robust performance in planning tasks even under significant model mismatches.
By Tuan Dam, Kishan Panaganti, Brahim Driss, Adam Wierman
arXiv:2608. 15146v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We revisit Tesauro's TD-Gammon for backgammon money games in the setting of no evaluation-time search.
By Alexander L. Strehl
arXiv:2610.17391v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Amazing breakthroughs in reinforcement learning have taken place. Computers teach themselves to play Chess and Go and beat world champions. There is ta...
By Aske Plaat
arXiv:2607. 26946v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent advancements in Computer Go, driven by AlphaZero and MuZero, rely heavily on Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) to correct the errors of the neural network policy.
By Mehrad Yaghoubi, Azam Bastanfard, Abbas Jalilvand, Ashkan Rezaei
BluffJAX is an open‑source suite of adversarial imperfect‑information games implemented in JAX, designed for high‑throughput simulation and GPU parallelization. It includes classic benchmarks like Texas Hold’Em and Kuhn Poker, as well as newer games such as Bluff, Stud Poker, and Kemps, aiming to broaden research in game‑theoretic reinforcement learning. The authors benchmarked throughput, memory usage, and algorithmic performance across single and multi‑GPU setups, showing scalability to hundreds of millions of samples per second and providing baseline results for future work.
By Aryaman Reddi, Jan Peters, Carlo D'Eramo
The paper introduces LUGL (Local Updates, Global Learning), a framework that separates data collection from model fitting, allowing non‑incremental learners such as gradient‑boosted trees (LightGBM) to be used in reinforcement learning for games. LUGL alternates between a local update phase—where agents play self‑play games and store tabular updates—and a global learning phase—where a function approximator is trained on the accumulated table before it is reset. Experiments on both perfect‑information and imperfect‑information games show that LightGBM‑based agents perform competitively or better than neural‑network baselines like DQN and DeepCFR.
By David Milec, Spyridon Samothrakis, Michael Fairbank, Dennis J. N. J. Soemers
arXiv:2610.13995v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Post-training large language models (LLMs) on two-player zero-sum games provides a verifiable reward, and the gains have been shown to transfer to ge...
By Weixian Waylon Li, Jiaxin Zhang, Han Zhou, Chengzu Li, Ke Wang, Fengxiang He, Yiwen Guo
arXiv:2606. 23995v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent work has established that regularized policy gradient methods such as PPO, when used in self-play, can match or exceed specialized game-theoretic algorithms for solving two-player zero-sum imperfect-information games.
By Tristan Maidment, JB Lanier, Chase McDonald, Nathan Tsang, Eugene Vinitsky, Roy Fox, Albert Wang, Wesley N. Kerr
The paper introduces Local Updates, Global Learning (LUGL), a framework that separates data collection from model training, allowing non‑incremental learners such as gradient‑boosted trees (LightGBM) to be used in reinforcement learning for games. LUGL alternates between a local phase—where self‑play generates tabular updates—and a global phase—where these updates train a function approximator before resetting the table. Experiments on both perfect‑information and imperfect‑information games show that LightGBM agents perform competitively or better than neural‑network baselines like DQN and DeepCFR.