[Bozeman]

Also, while the problem of time to diffusion accross a plane (or general n-1 dimensional subspace) (which corresponds to one player being eliminated) is quite doable, the problem of interest involves the very difficult computation of the probability of crossing one such boundary before crossing another. In addition, you would need to find the probability of exit at each point along that plane, and finding the n-1th finisher would be an integral of the results of all possible n-1 player chip distributions * prob. that such distribution is reached (this integral then being the exact conditional probability in the 1(b) case). (As thylacine said, just finding out who finishes last with what probability only solves the entire problem in the 3 player case.) But the solution to the n-1 player problem and the probability of getting to each possible boundary point together solve the n player problem.

Craig