Working again. Here's what I did:
1) Deleted existing
liblist.gam file file - assumed it was fracked-up in some way.
2) Re-ran SteamCMD to update/validate the Counter-Strike install. That resulted in a fresh
liblist.gam file being downloaded.
3) Re-customized the
liblist.gam file as specified.
4) Started it up and all looks good so far. This is with the defaul PBMM "
full" install with-out any customized bot names or any of the other customized stuff I took out during previous troubleshooting.
PS: Also running it as version "
V3B22c", because I had downloaded and tried that during prior troubleshooting.