Offline Two-Player Zero-Sum Markov Games with KL Regularization
2605.13025

Authors

Shuze Daniel Liu,Nan Jiang,Claire Chen,Yuheng Zhang,Xinyu Liu

Abstract

We study the problem of learning Nash equilibria in offline two-player zero-sum Markov games. While existing approaches often rely on explicit pessimism to address distribution shift, we show that KL regularization alone suffices to stabilize learning and guarantee convergence.

We first introduce Regularized Offline Sequential Equilibrium (ROSE), a theoretical framework that achieves a fast $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(1/n)$ convergence rate under unilateral concentrability, improving over the standard $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(1/\sqrt{n})$ rates in unregularized settings. We then propose Sequential Offline Self-play Mirror Descent (SOS-MD), a practical model-free algorithm based on least-squares value estimation and iterative self-play updates.

We prove that the last iterate of SOS-MD attains the same $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(1/n)$ statistical rate up to a vanishing optimization error of order $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(1/\sqrt{T})$ in the number of self-play iterations $T$.

Resources

Ray graphicRay graphicRay graphicRay graphic

Stay in the loop

Every AI paper that matters, free in your inbox daily.

Details

  • takara.ai
  • Custom AI and machine learning from the Frontier Research Team.
  • © 2026 takara.ai Ltd
  • Content is sourced from third-party publications.
Ray graphicRay graphicRay graphic