mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Learning to Play: Reinforcement Learning and Games

arXiv 2610.17391 ↗First posted 12 Oct 2026cs.AIcited by 0

On the map: Deep reinforcement learning methods → RL for games and combinatorial optimization

Abstract (arXiv)

Amazing breakthroughs in reinforcement learning have taken place. Computers teach themselves to play Chess and Go and beat world champions. There is talk about expanding application areas towards general artificial intelligence (AI). The breakthroughs in Backgammon, Checkers, Chess, Atari, Go, Poker, and StarCraft have shown that we can build machines that exhibit intelligent game playing of the highest level. These successes have been widely publicized in the media, and inspire AI entrepreneurs and scientists alike. Reinforcement learning in games has become a mainstream AI research topic. It is a broad topic, and the successes build on a range of diverse techniques, from exact planning algorithms, to adaptive sampling, deep function approximation, and ingenious self-play methods. Perhaps because of the breadth of these technologies, or because of the recency of the breakthroughs, there are few books that explain these methods in depth. This book covers all methods in one comprehensive volume, explaining the latest research, bringing you as close as possible to working implementations, with many references to the original research papers. The programming examples in this book are in Python, the language in which most current reinforcement learning research is conducted. We help you to get started with machine learning frameworks such as Gym, TensorFlow, and Keras, and provide exercises to help understand how AI is learning to play.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in RL for games and combinatorial optimization, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods. Builds on 133 of its 712 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2026.

Builds on

133 of 712 references.

References · 133

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38 more
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