Patrick wrote:
But I'm wondering what more I can do to get the most out of CM 9000

Well, it offers a variety of computerized opponents and many tutorials
/ quizzes. What else are you looking for?

Not sure. Maybe nothing really. I guess I was kinda hoping for a
computerized "mentor" to take me by the hand and walk me step by step
through what all I need to do to play better and enjoy the game even
more. Or maybe some advice on how to best take advantage of the
database of famous games. I mean, if they're so poorly annotated,
what's the point of running through them? Half the time I have no idea
why a certain move is being made.

First let me start off by saying that the first people to reply to your
post have very good things to say.

As for the annotated games in Chessmaster, it's true that many of them
are sparsely annotated. For the first several versions of CM, the
annotations are not particularly useful. It is only starting with the
games that were added for CM8000 that the annotations start to become
more frequent and less cryptic. However, those games would only account
for about 15% of all of the Classic Games, so there might be a lot of
hunting and pecking. Generally, I don't go to the Classic Games unless
somebody elsewhere mentions a "classic game", and then I look to see if
it is in the Library.

Another big question right now is time controls. In tournament mode
(for rated games), it doesn't seem possible to have separate time
controls. I don't want to sit and wait a long time for the computer to
make its move, but I don't want to be under time pressure myself either
(I blunder enough without having to worry about that).

If you want different (unfair) time controls, you can play in the game
room instead of the tournament room. Those won't affect your rating.

You say you "sit and wait" while the computer makes it move. Imagine
that the computer's time is extra time for you to consider the
position, just like in a real tournament game.

This last point is VITAL, and it is the reason why we did not allow
separate time controls for Rated Games like we did in the Game Room.
You definitely need to learn how to think on your opponent's time.

Guess I just haven't played around enough with the controls--and I've
been away from computer chess for a while. What I remember from old
chess computers is that if you set them to infinite time, you can
figure on letting it sit overnight (or longer) while the computer
calculates its move. And if you give yourself and the computer the
same amount of time, you'll be mercilessly clobbered every game.

Not necessarily true. See next paragraph.

But I suppose that with all these rated AI players in CM9000, the
program dumbs itself down enough that a 1300-rated AI player does in
five minutes about what a 1300-rated human player would do in five
minutes. Is that right? IOW, I don't need to monkey with the time
controls in order to balance the game?

The CM9000 FAQ (which, unfortunately, no longer seems to be available
online) talks a fair bit about how the personalities were rated. Here
are the pertinent entries:

Q. How are the ratings for the computer personalities calculated?
A. The rating for the Chessmaster personality is based on several
factors: the Swedish Rating List (SSDF) for the engine in Chessmaster
6000 on a Pentium 90 processor, an estimation of the strength of the
NEW version of The King, based on the SSDF's rating of the OLD version,
and several thousand computer vs. computer and human vs. computer
games.
The SSDF rating was converted from the Swedish scale to the U.S. scale
and an adjustment was made for later improvements to the chess engine.
Then a series of computer vs. human and computer vs. computer
tournaments were played (a total of over 15,000 games, about 3,000 of
which were human vs. computer) at a time control of Fischer 5/10 (five
minutes, plus 10 seconds for each move). The results of these games
were fed into a ratings calculator.
Each of the personalities has a base rating as measured on a Pentium
II-450 (the minimum spec processor for Chessmaster 9000). When you run
Chessmaster 9000 on your system, the program performs a CPU benchmark
measurement and adjusts the ratings accordingly. That formula is [Base
Rating] + 50 * ln([Your CPU Speed] / [Base CPU Speed]) / ln(2). A
reasonable rule of thumb to use is that each doubling of CPU speed
results in a rating increase of 50 points.

Q. How accurate are the ratings for the personalities?
A. The ratings are mathematically precise, but they are mostly based on
computer vs. computer games. While the human vs. computer games added
much more "real-world" accuracy to the ratings in Chessmaster 9000,
many of the Chessmaster personalities have quirks in their playing
styles that a human will be able to exploit but a computer opponent
will not be able to "see". Discovering and then taking advantage of
these weaknesses is part of the fun of Chessmaster, but you might find
yourself able to defeat certain personalities that you don't think you
should be able to based on their ratings.

jm