Grouping Nodes With Known Value Differences: A Lossless UCT-based Abstraction Algorithm

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Hauptverfasser: Schmöcker, Robin, Dockhorn, Alexander, Rosenhahn, Bodo
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Schmöcker, Robin
Dockhorn, Alexander
Rosenhahn, Bodo
author_facet Schmöcker, Robin
Dockhorn, Alexander
Rosenhahn, Bodo
contents A core challenge of Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is its sample efficiency, which can be improved by grouping state-action pairs and using their aggregate statistics instead of single-node statistics. On the Go Abstractions in Upper Confidence bounds applied to Trees (OGA-UCT) is the state-of-the-art MCTS abstraction algorithm for deterministic environments that builds its abstraction using the Abstractions of State-Action Pairs (ASAP) framework, which aims to detect states and state-action pairs with the same value under optimal play by analysing the search graph. ASAP, however, requires two state-action pairs to have the same immediate reward, which is a rigid condition that limits the number of abstractions that can be found and thereby the sample efficiency. In this paper, we break with the paradigm of grouping value-equivalent states or state-action pairs and instead group states and state-action pairs with possibly different values as long as the difference between their values can be inferred. We call this abstraction framework Known Value Difference Abstractions (KVDA), which infers the value differences by analysis of the immediate rewards and modifies OGA-UCT to use this framework instead. The modification is called KVDA-UCT, which detects significantly more abstractions than OGA-UCT, introduces no additional parameter, and outperforms OGA-UCT on a variety of deterministic environments and parameter settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_25388
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Grouping Nodes With Known Value Differences: A Lossless UCT-based Abstraction Algorithm
Schmöcker, Robin
Dockhorn, Alexander
Rosenhahn, Bodo
Artificial Intelligence
A core challenge of Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is its sample efficiency, which can be improved by grouping state-action pairs and using their aggregate statistics instead of single-node statistics. On the Go Abstractions in Upper Confidence bounds applied to Trees (OGA-UCT) is the state-of-the-art MCTS abstraction algorithm for deterministic environments that builds its abstraction using the Abstractions of State-Action Pairs (ASAP) framework, which aims to detect states and state-action pairs with the same value under optimal play by analysing the search graph. ASAP, however, requires two state-action pairs to have the same immediate reward, which is a rigid condition that limits the number of abstractions that can be found and thereby the sample efficiency. In this paper, we break with the paradigm of grouping value-equivalent states or state-action pairs and instead group states and state-action pairs with possibly different values as long as the difference between their values can be inferred. We call this abstraction framework Known Value Difference Abstractions (KVDA), which infers the value differences by analysis of the immediate rewards and modifies OGA-UCT to use this framework instead. The modification is called KVDA-UCT, which detects significantly more abstractions than OGA-UCT, introduces no additional parameter, and outperforms OGA-UCT on a variety of deterministic environments and parameter settings.
title Grouping Nodes With Known Value Differences: A Lossless UCT-based Abstraction Algorithm
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25388