## A Semi-Potential for Finite and Infinite Sequential Games (Extended Abstract)

 Stéphane Le Roux (Universite libre de Bruxelles) Arno Pauly (Universite libre de Bruxelles)

 We consider a dynamical approach to sequential games. By restricting the convertibility relation over strategy profiles, we obtain a semi-potential (in the sense of Kukushkin), and we show that in finite games the corresponding restriction of better-response dynamics will converge to a Nash equilibrium in quadratic time. Convergence happens on a per-player basis, and even in the presence of players with cyclic preferences, the players with acyclic preferences will stabilize. Thus, we obtain a candidate notion for rationality in the presence of irrational agents. Moreover, the restriction of convertibility can be justified by a conservative updating of beliefs about the other players strategies. For infinite sequential games we can retain convergence to a Nash equilibrium (in some sense), if the preferences are given by continuous payoff functions; or obtain a transfinite convergence if the outcome sets of the game are Delta^0_2 sets.

In Domenico Cantone and Giorgio Delzanno: Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on Games, Automata, Logics and Formal Verification (GandALF 2016), Catania, Italy, 14-16 September 2016, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 226, pp. 242–256.
Published: 13th September 2016.

 ArXived at: http://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.226.17 bibtex PDF
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