Last-Iterate Convergence Properties of Regret-Matching Algorithms in Games
This addresses a gap in understanding convergence properties for widely used game-solving algorithms, offering new theoretical insights with potential impact on algorithm design in game theory and optimization.
The paper tackles the problem of last-iterate convergence for Regret-Matching algorithms in two-player zero-sum games, showing that practical variants lack guarantees but proving that smoothed variants achieve asymptotic convergence, 1/√t best-iterate convergence, and linear-rate convergence with restarting.
We study last-iterate convergence properties of algorithms for solving two-player zero-sum games based on Regret Matching$^+$ (RM$^+$). Despite their widespread use for solving real games, virtually nothing is known about their last-iterate convergence. A major obstacle to analyzing RM-type dynamics is that their regret operators lack Lipschitzness and (pseudo)monotonicity. We start by showing numerically that several variants used in practice, such as RM$^+$, predictive RM$^+$ and alternating RM$^+$, all lack last-iterate convergence guarantees even on a simple $3\times 3$ matrix game. We then prove that recent variants of these algorithms based on a smoothing technique, extragradient RM$^{+}$ and smooth Predictive RM$^+$, enjoy asymptotic last-iterate convergence (without a rate), $1/\sqrt{t}$ best-iterate convergence, and when combined with restarting, linear-rate last-iterate convergence. Our analysis builds on a new characterization of the geometric structure of the limit points of our algorithms, marking a significant departure from most of the literature on last-iterate convergence. We believe that our analysis may be of independent interest and offers a fresh perspective for studying last-iterate convergence in algorithms based on non-monotone operators.