Volume 7615 of the series Lecture Notes in Computer Science pp 251-262
A Theoretical Examination of Practical Game Playing: Lookahead Search
- Vahab MirrokniAffiliated withGoogle Research
- , Nithum ThainAffiliated withDepartment of Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University
- , Adrian VettaAffiliated withDepartment of Mathematics and Statistics and School of Computer Science, McGill University
Abstract
Lookahead search is perhaps the most natural and widely used game playing strategy. Given the practical importance of the method, the aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical performance examination of lookahead search in a wide variety of applications. To determine a strategy play using lookahead search, each agent predicts multiple levels of possible re-actions to her move (via the use of a search tree), and then chooses the play that optimizes her future payoff accounting for these re-actions. There are several choices of optimization function the agents can choose, where the most appropriate choice of function will depend on the specifics of the actual game - we illustrate this in our examples. Furthermore, the type of search tree chosen by computationally-constrained agent can vary. We focus on the case where agents can evaluate only a bounded number, k, of moves into the future. That is, we use depth k search trees and call this approach k-lookahead search. We apply our method in five well-known settings: industrial organization (Cournot’s model); AdWord auctions; congestion games; valid-utility games and basic-utility games; cost-sharing network design games. We consider two questions. First, what is the expected social quality of outcome when agents apply lookahead search? Second, what interactive behaviours can be exhibited when players use lookahead search? We demonstrate how the answer depends on the game played.
Keywords
game theory market games valid utility games cournot stackelberg adwords network design bounded rationality- Title
- A Theoretical Examination of Practical Game Playing: Lookahead Search
- Book Title
- Algorithmic Game Theory
- Book Subtitle
- 5th International Symposium, SAGT 2012, Barcelona, Spain, October 22-23, 2012. Proceedings
- Pages
- pp 251-262
- Copyright
- 2012
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-642-33996-7_22
- Print ISBN
- 978-3-642-33995-0
- Online ISBN
- 978-3-642-33996-7
- Series Title
- Lecture Notes in Computer Science
- Series Volume
- 7615
- Series ISSN
- 0302-9743
- Publisher
- Springer Berlin Heidelberg
- Copyright Holder
- Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
- Additional Links
- Topics
- Keywords
-
- game theory
- market games
- valid utility games
- cournot
- stackelberg
- adwords
- network design
- bounded rationality
- Industry Sectors
- eBook Packages
- Editors
-
- Maria Serna (16)
- Editor Affiliations
-
- 16. Department de Llenguatges i Sistemes Informàtics, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, ALBCOM
- Authors
-
- Vahab Mirrokni (17)
- Nithum Thain (18)
- Adrian Vetta (19)
- Author Affiliations
-
- 17. Google Research, New York, USA
- 18. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University, USA
- 19. Department of Mathematics and Statistics and School of Computer Science, McGill University, USA
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