Mean-payoff and Energy Discrete Bidding Games

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Avni, Guy, Sadhukhan, Suman
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Avni, Guy
Sadhukhan, Suman
author_facet Avni, Guy
Sadhukhan, Suman
contents A \emph{bidding} game is played on a graph as follows. A token is placed on an initial vertex and both players are allocated budgets. In each turn, the players simultaneously submit bids that do not exceed their available budgets, the higher bidder moves the token, and pays the bid to the lower bidder. We focus on \emph{discrete}-bidding, which are motivated by practical applications and restrict the granularity of the players' bids, e.g, bids must be given in cents. We study, for the first time, discrete-bidding games with {\em mean-payoff} and {\em energy} objectives. In contrast, mean-payoff {\em continuous}-bidding games (i.e., no granularity restrictions) are understood and exhibit a rich mathematical structure. The {\em threshold} budget is a necessary and sufficient initial budget for winning an energy game or guaranteeing a target payoff in a mean-payoff game. We first establish existence of threshold budgets; a non-trivial property due to the concurrent moves of the players. Moreover, we identify the structure of the thresholds, which is key in obtaining compact strategies, and in turn, showing that finding threshold is in \NP~and \coNP even in succinctly-represented games.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_00506
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mean-payoff and Energy Discrete Bidding Games
Avni, Guy
Sadhukhan, Suman
Computer Science and Game Theory
Formal Languages and Automata Theory
Multiagent Systems
A \emph{bidding} game is played on a graph as follows. A token is placed on an initial vertex and both players are allocated budgets. In each turn, the players simultaneously submit bids that do not exceed their available budgets, the higher bidder moves the token, and pays the bid to the lower bidder. We focus on \emph{discrete}-bidding, which are motivated by practical applications and restrict the granularity of the players' bids, e.g, bids must be given in cents. We study, for the first time, discrete-bidding games with {\em mean-payoff} and {\em energy} objectives. In contrast, mean-payoff {\em continuous}-bidding games (i.e., no granularity restrictions) are understood and exhibit a rich mathematical structure. The {\em threshold} budget is a necessary and sufficient initial budget for winning an energy game or guaranteeing a target payoff in a mean-payoff game. We first establish existence of threshold budgets; a non-trivial property due to the concurrent moves of the players. Moreover, we identify the structure of the thresholds, which is key in obtaining compact strategies, and in turn, showing that finding threshold is in \NP~and \coNP even in succinctly-represented games.
title Mean-payoff and Energy Discrete Bidding Games
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
Formal Languages and Automata Theory
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.00506