Minimax-Optimal Policy Regret in Partially Observable Markov Games

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Arora, Raman
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Arora, Raman
author_facet Arora, Raman
contents We study sequential decision-making in partially observable environments against strategic, adaptive opponents, modeled as partially observable Markov games (POMGs). The central challenge is to learn latent dynamics from partial observations while facing an adversary whose behavior depends on the learner's strategy, making standard regret notions inadequate. We prove that an epoch-based optimistic maximum-likelihood algorithm achieves $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ policy regret for fixed problem parameters, with explicit dependence on the horizon, adversary memory, confidence radius, and the aggregate Eluder dimension of the observable-operator class. The algorithm selects one policy per geometrically growing epoch using confidence sets built cumulatively from past data, which keeps the cost of comparing adversary responses across policies logarithmic in $T$. We also prove a lower bound matching the $\sqrt{T}$ and aggregate-Eluder-dimension dependence, up to problem-dependent and logarithmic factors. Finally, we extend the framework to horizon-adaptive guarantees and adversaries with geometric fading memory.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_02363
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Minimax-Optimal Policy Regret in Partially Observable Markov Games
Arora, Raman
Machine Learning
We study sequential decision-making in partially observable environments against strategic, adaptive opponents, modeled as partially observable Markov games (POMGs). The central challenge is to learn latent dynamics from partial observations while facing an adversary whose behavior depends on the learner's strategy, making standard regret notions inadequate. We prove that an epoch-based optimistic maximum-likelihood algorithm achieves $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ policy regret for fixed problem parameters, with explicit dependence on the horizon, adversary memory, confidence radius, and the aggregate Eluder dimension of the observable-operator class. The algorithm selects one policy per geometrically growing epoch using confidence sets built cumulatively from past data, which keeps the cost of comparing adversary responses across policies logarithmic in $T$. We also prove a lower bound matching the $\sqrt{T}$ and aggregate-Eluder-dimension dependence, up to problem-dependent and logarithmic factors. Finally, we extend the framework to horizon-adaptive guarantees and adversaries with geometric fading memory.
title Minimax-Optimal Policy Regret in Partially Observable Markov Games
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.02363