Late comment on Astumian's paradox
  In 2001 Astumian published a very simple game which can be described by a Markov chain with absorbing initial and final states. In August 2004 Piotrowski and Sladowski asserted that Astumian's analysis was flawed. However, as was shown by Astumian, this statement was wrong. In this comment the properties of Markov chains corresponding to games that are more general than that studied by Astumian, are investigated. 
L. Pal