We study the existence of undominated elements of acyclic relations. A sufficient condition for the existence is given without any topological assumptions when the dominance relation is finite valued. The condition says that there is a point such that all dominance sequences starting from this point are reducible. A dominance sequence is reducible, if it is possible to remove some elements from it so that the resulting subsequence is still a dominance sequence. Necessary and sufficient conditions are formulated for closed acyclic relations on compact Hausdorff spaces. Reducibility is the key concept also in this case. A representation theorem for such relations is given. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.