mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Abstraction Agent

arXiv 2609.04303 ↗First posted 3 Sep 2026cs.MA cs.AI cs.CLcited by 1

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Reinforcement learning for LLM agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Information abstraction, which groups strategically similar private states into a tractable number of buckets, is essential for scaling game-solving algorithms to large imperfect-information games. Constructing effective abstractions, however, has traditionally required domain-specific evaluators such as hand-strength calculators or equity estimators, which demand expert knowledge and engineering effort and are unavailable for most less-studied games. We propose the Abstraction Agent, a zero-shot pipeline that uses a large language model (LLM) to discover continuous strategic features from a natural-language game description, score private states on these features, and cluster them into abstraction buckets, without any game-specific evaluator, training data, or game-tree traversal during abstraction construction. The pipeline runs in four phases: feature discovery with calibration anchors, batched private-state scoring, correlation-based feature selection, and k-means clustering. The resulting abstractions reduce lifted-strategy exploitability by up to 62% relative to an expected-hand-strength baseline on heads-up no-limit Texas hold'em (HUNL) turn endgames, and beat a scalar rank baseline at every granularity on ROVER Trials, an original game absent from any pretraining corpus. Beyond these quantitative benchmarks, the pipeline transfers with unchanged prompts to four-card Pot-Limit Omaha, HUNL preflop and flop, and Riichi Mahjong, where the discovered features track each game's recognized strategic concepts. This is structured knowledge elicitation: converting implicit strategic knowledge in LLM parameters into explicit numerical features for downstream algorithmic computation. The code is available at https://github.com/lbn187/AbstractionAgent.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for LLM agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 25 of its 54 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Sep 2026.

Builds on

25 of 54 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026How Far Are LLMs from Professional Poker Players? Revisiting Game-Theoretic Reasoning with Agentic Tool Use31 Jan
  2. 2025Pok'eChamp: an Expert-level Minimax Language Agent6 Mar
  3. 2023Suspicion-Agent: Playing Imperfect Information Games with Theory of Mind Aware GPT-429 Sep

Other references · 22

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  2. 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasonerscited by 4,374
  3. 2017DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Pokercited by 233
  4. 2023Large Language Models for Automated Data Science: Introducing CAAFE for Context-Aware Automated Feature Engineeringcited by 127
  5. 2018Deep Counterfactual Regret Minimizationcited by 103
  6. 2023Strategic Reasoning with Language Modelscited by 64
  7. 2025Code World Models for General Game Playingcited by 26
  8. 2023Are ChatGPT and GPT-4 Good Poker Players? -- A Pre-Flop Analysiscited by 20
  9. 2024PokerGPT: An End-to-End Lightweight Solver for Multi-Player Texas Hold'em via Large Language Modelcited by 20
  10. 2025PokerBench: Training Large Language Models to become Professional Poker Playerscited by 18
  11. 2018Solving Large Sequential Games with the Excessive Gap Techniquecited by 16
  12. 2013Measuring the Size of Large No-Limit Poker Gamescited by 15
10 more
  1. 2024RL-CFR: Improving Action Abstraction for Imperfect Information Extensive-Form Games with Reinforcement Learningcited by 10
  2. 2026Effective, Efficient, and General Information Abstraction for Imperfect-Information Extensive-Form Gamescited by 7
  3. 2025From Natural Language to Extensive-Form Game Representationscited by 6
  4. 2026Real-Time Parallel Counterfactual Regret Minimizationcited by 6
  5. 2026Correlated Chance Sampling for Monte Carlo Counterfactual Regret Minimizationcited by 6
  6. 2026PokerSkill: LLMs Can Play Expert-Level Poker without Training or Solverscited by 5
  7. 2025Can Large Language Models Master Complex Card Games?cited by 4
  8. 2026Agents That Certify Their Own Exploits: Confidence-Scheduled Restricted Responses for Safe Opponent Exploitationcited by 4
  9. 2026Solver-Guided Reasoning for Mixed-Equilibrium Strategiescited by 2
  10. 2026ICM Out! Better Tournament Strategy from Computed Continuations, vs. Solvers and LLMscited by 2

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026SpireBench: Evaluating Long-Horizon Strategic Play of Agentic Models with Slay the Spire
  2. 2026Modular Discovery of General Game-Playing Algorithms with Large Language Models
  3. 2026BotzoneBench: Scalable LLM Evaluation via Graded AI Anchors
  4. 2026GENSTRAT: Toward a Science of Strategic Reasoning in Large Language Models
  5. 2025Do LLMs Know When to Flip a Coin? Strategic Randomization through Reasoning and Experience
  6. 2026Choosing LLMs for Strategic Agent Interactions
  7. 2026DiG-bench: Discovery in Games
  8. 2025FAIRGAME: a Framework for AI Agents Bias Recognition using Game Theory