Game Theory for Multi-Agent Systems Reading List

Curated by Mouhssine Rifaki | Stanford Electrical Engineering | Last updated August 2026

Game-theoretic foundations for understanding strategic interactions in multi-agent systems.

Game Theory for Multi-Agent Systems: 10 key papers

1. A Unified Game-Theoretic Approach to Multiagent Reinforcement Learning
   Lanctot et al. arXiv 2017.
2. Re-evaluating Evaluation
   Balduzzi et al. arXiv 2018.
3. Open-ended Learning in Symmetric Zero-sum Games
   Balduzzi et al. arXiv 2019.
4. From Motor Control to Team Play in Simulated Humanoid Football
   Liu et al. arXiv 2021.
5. Mastering the Game of No-Press Diplomacy via Human-Regularized Reinforcement Learning and Planning
   Bakhtin et al. arXiv 2022.
6. Superhuman AI for multiplayer poker
   Brown and Sandholm. Science 2019.
7. α-Rank: Multi-Agent Evaluation by Evolution
   Omidshafiei et al. Scientific Reports 2019.
8. Deep Counterfactual Regret Minimization
   Brown et al. arXiv 2018.
9. Computing Approximate Equilibria in Sequential Adversarial Games by Exploitability Descent
   Lockhart et al. arXiv 2019.
10. A Generalised Method for Empirical Game Theoretic Analysis
    Tuyls et al. arXiv 2018.

Related reading lists

• Self-Play & Population-Based Training
• Mean-Field Games & Mean-Field Control
• Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
• Opponent Modeling & Theory of Mind
• Emergent Behavior & Self-Organization
• Collective Intelligence
• Off-Policy Evaluation & Offline Evaluation
• Communication in Multi-Agent RL