I see very few games available in Live Chess

Everytime I click on live chess, I see very few games available. Typically none--but sometimes one or two--never three. I wonder why this is. It does not matter what time of the day I come on, nor what day of the week, chess.com is always the same for my account.

I think my account has been flagged by the admins so that I don't see many live games. This was done without notifying me or telling me why. So, I would like to find out the reason.

There aren't many games that show up at any given point. Just click on "Start Game" and choose your preferred settings.

I'm guessing this site auto-matches whenever possible, whereas other sites might have manual choice as an option.

If everyone in range is auto-matched, the "lack of games available" is not really accurate, as the people seeking will be auto-matched as soon as someone comes up meething their rating criteria. (Or perhaps in a queue, which would make sense, but would still not slow things down that much on a site with 7000+ people in live chess at any given time.)

I typically only see 1-3 seeks on the chart at any given time, but am still quickly matched when I seek a game.

Maybe the games are just matched up very quickly.  What time control do you want?  I think most of the live players want to play very fast time controls.

I never auto-match. I always pick a game or else post a game. If I post a game, usually somebody will join, especially if it's fast.

I saw three games available in Live Chess at 12:30 Friday June 14, 2013 EST.

I guess I expected to see more games showing up than 0-3 at any given moment, given that there are usually from 8000 - 12000 live games going on.

Just a word to the wise--your mileage may vary.

I discovered later I had set up a filter excluding a lot of rating ranges. Once I removed the filter, my hit rate for open games increased.

Oops, my bad.