Solving imperfect-information games via exponential counterfactual regret minimization

Abstract: In general, two-agent decision-making problems can be modeled as a two-player game, and a typical solution is to find a Nash equilibrium in such game. Counterfactual regret minimization (CFR) is a well-known method to find a Nash equilibrium strategy in a two-player zero-sum game with imperfect information. The CFR method adopts a regret matching algorithm iteratively to reduce regret values progressively, enabling the average strategy to approach a Nash equilibrium. Although CFR-based methods have achieved significant success in the field of imperfect information games, there is still scope for improvement in the efficiency of convergence. To address this challenge, we propose a novel CFR-based method named exponential counterfactual regret minimization (ECFR). With ECFR, an exponential weighting technique is used to reweight the instantaneous regret value during the process of iteration. A theoretical proof is provided to guarantees convergence of the ECFR algorithm. The result of an extensive set of experimental tests demostrate that the ECFR algorithm converges faster than the current state-of-the-art CFR-based methods.