Forward Looking Best-Response Multiplicative Weights Update Methods
We propose a novel variant of the multiplicative weights update method with forward-looking best-response strategies, that guarantees last-iterate convergence for zero-sum games with a unique Nash equilibrium. Particularly, we show that the proposed algorithm converges to an η^1/ρ-approximate Nash equilibrium, with ρ > 1, by decreasing the Kullback-Leibler divergence of each iterate by a rate of at least Ω(η^1+1/ρ), for sufficiently small learning rate η. When our method enters a sufficiently small neighborhood of the solution, it becomes a contraction and converges to the Nash equilibrium of the game. Furthermore, we perform an experimental comparison with the recently proposed optimistic variant of the multiplicative weights update method, by <cit.>, which has also been proved to attain last-iterate convergence. Our findings reveal that our algorithm offers substantial gains both in terms of the convergence rate and the region of contraction relative to the previous approach.
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