Memoryless determinacy of parity and mean payoff games: a simple proof

We give a simple, direct, and constructive proof of memoryless determinacy for parity and mean payo& games. First, we prove by induction that the 8nite duration versions of these games, played until some vertex is repeated, are determined and both players have memoryless winning strategies. In contrast to the proof of Ehrenfeucht and Mycielski, Internat. J. Game Theory, 8 (1979) 109–113, our proof does not refer to the in8nite-duration versions. Second, we show that memoryless determinacy straightforwardly generalizes to in8nite duration versions of parity and mean payo& games. c © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.