A Direct Reduction from Stochastic Parity Games to Simple Stochastic Games
22/8/2025, 3:00pm
Speaker
Abstract
Significant progress has been recently achieved in developing efficient solutions for simple stochastic games (SSGs), focusing on reachability objectives. While reductions from stochastic parity games (SPGs) to SSGs have been presented in the literature through the use of multiple intermediate game models, a direct and simple reduction has been notably absent. This work introduces a novel and direct polynomial-time reduction from quantitative SPGs to quantitative SSGs. By leveraging a gadget-based transformation that effectively removes the priority function, we construct an SSG that approximates the behavior of a given SPG. We formally establish the correctness of our direct reduction. Furthermore, we demonstrate that under binary encoding this reduction is polynomial, thereby directly corroborating the known NP ∩ coNP complexity of SPGs and providing new understanding in the relationship between parity and reachability objectives in turn-based stochastic games.
Bio
Zihan Zhou is a second-year PhD student in the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore, advised by Umang Mathur. He is broadly interested in program verification and logic.