Abstract. Different mutation operators have been proposed in evolutionary programming. However, each operator may be efficient in solving a subset of problems, but will fail in another one. Through a mixture of various mutation operators, it is possible to integrate their advantages together. This paper presents a game-theoretic approach for designing evolutionary programming with a mixed mutation strategy. The approach is applied to design a mixed strategy using Gaussian and Cauchy mutations. The experimental results show the mixed strategy can obtain the same performance as, or even better than the best of pure strategies.