Are you referring to Chessmaster 10th Edition or Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition?
For Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition, I'd say the norm is 20 - 25 people... I've seen as high as 100, and there have been one or two instances where I've gone online and seen no one.
thx.I wanted to compare with 10 th edition, more or less, now there only 8 players online... earlier there were even up to 30, cm10 online seems be getting dead...
Honestly, playing chessmaster online aint really good. I mean there are problems with it not only lack of players but also the greyed out play issue.
For better online chess there are tons of online sites out there like FICS who have brilliant online chess servers and thousands of players to choose to play with.
I just hope that Chessmaster 12th edition will be great!