Zermelo and the early history of game theory

In the modern literature on game theory there are several Versions of what is known as Zermelo's theorem. It is shown that most of these modern statem ents of Zermelo's theorem bear only a partial relationship to what Zermelo really did. We also give a short survey and discussion of the closely relat ed but almost unknown work by Konig (1927, Acta Sci Math. Szeged, 3, 121-13 0) and Kalmar (1928/29, Acta Sci Math. Szeged, 4, 65-85). Their papers exte nd and considerably generalize Zermelo's approach. A translation of Zermelo 's paper is included in the Appendix. (C) 2001 Academic Press.