I am having trouble playing a rated game against the chess computer. I click on computerhard 3 and one of the options is challenge to a game. After setting the time controls the computer comes up on my challenges list that meet the filter requirements. But where it normally reads play under the action column it only reads view for me. What am I doing wrong?

The computer chess in live chess is extremely popular, so creating a challenge directly to the computer chess may take some time for it to start.

They have a limited amount of simul games they can play, so you may have more luck checking the challenges tab and accepting a computer chess challenge rather than creating a direct challenge to them :)