 Solution

After $\tau$, the token product remains zero, whereas the deterministic term $nN/3$ continues to increase. Combining this with the pre-elimination calculation in part (ii),The stochastic process is adapted and integrable at each fixed time, and the displayed conditional expectation is nonnegative. Thus $(M_n)$ is a submartingale.

For $N>0$ it is neither a martingale nor a supermartingale. If $a,b,c>0$, there is positive probability that the first player transfers a token to the second in each of the next $a$ rounds. Until the last such round all three remain active, so this event has probability $6^{-a}>0$ and entails $\tau \le a$. At time $n=a$ the displayed conditional expectation is therefore strictly positive on an event of positive probability, ruling out both the zero drift required of a martingale and the nonpositive drift required of a supermartingale. If an initial holding is zero, $\tau =0$ and the same conclusion follows immediately. The degenerate case $N=0$ gives a constant martingale.