Actually, it is, at least for Petrosian's championship years. (For 1960-1962, Fischer was very active, of course.)

Petrosian was actually one of the more active champions. Not quite up there with Karpov and Kasparov, who seemed to play in everything, but close behind.

I don't have Kasparov's numbers immediately handy, but checking a 1986 article, Karpov played 45.4 serious tournament games a year as champion, compared to Petrosian's 44.2.

At the time, the record for most total games played as champion was:

1. Karpov: 454
2. Petrosian: 265
3. Alekhine: 238
12. Fischer: 0

According to this, only 1/3 of the 12 champions played at half of Karpov's level or better (which would be 22.7 games per year). During his "wilderness years", Fischer was averaging 21.6 (compared to an eye-popping 58.0 for 1960-1962), so in effect he caught "Champion's Disease", without winning the championship. Bummer.

In terms of top level, high quality games, Fischer played the same level of quality opposition in his tournaments in the 1960's that Petrosian did.

The Elo and chessmetrics rating systems took all this into account, and that's why they both put Fischer at #1, even during the years Petrosian was champ.

Most people would consider twice as many to be a huge amount. If you don't, well, it's a matter of semantics.

We can cherry pick our evidence to reach any conclusion we want. I could do the same to prove the exact opposite. Example: Spassky must have been vastly superior to Fischer to be able to beat him out despite having no time to prepare, and being exhausted from a championship match that had ended a mere 7 days before the tournament began. Petrosian, who had beaten Spassky, must have been even stronger. (Isn't this fun?)

But honestly, theories that take all the evidence into account are more plausible than these cherry-picked ones. As mentioned before, we can see how Fischer did against Soviet GM's in the years 1963-1969, and it was in no way better than 1958-1962. We saw in 1962 that Fischer wasn't quite there yet. You can say "screw the results, I have an unofficial rating list that says Fischer was the best anyway." But frankly, I don't think you realize just how tacky these attempts to give Fischer a title he was afraid to even compete for sound.

Fischer qualified for the Amsterdam Interzonal and refused to play. (It was Larsen's opinion that he wouldn't have qualified even if he had, though personally I wouldn't go that far). If Fischer thought he wasn't yet ready to try again, I trust his judgment more than yours. It's not until 1970 that we see any real evidence that things had changed, and Fischer was now on top of the world. (I could be cruel and cherry-pick something or other to show that he wasn't the best even then, but I'll take the high road here.)

Chessmetrics over Elo any day.

Chessmetrics is very good, though even it has its flaws. The points they take away for inactivity can produce some unusual results, especially in the case of someone like Lasker, who they have as #9 going into his match with Marshall, behind Maroczy, Schlechter, Tarrasch, Marshall (!), Duras (!!), Teichmann (!!!), Rubinstein, and Janowsky (!!!!).

Now you may be tempted to say he deserved to lose all those rating points for being so inactive, but if you do, you'd be falling into a trap. Is the point of taking those points away to <punish> him? Or is the point to accurately measure his ability? If the latter, then we can see on repeated occasions, that he didn't really lose all that playing strength from being inactive, and so the system hasn't really accurately measured him.

Another problem with all rating systems, is that the ability to smash bunnies and the ability to beat the elite is all rolled together into one number.

Which is more valuable? Larsen could smash bunnies much better than Petrosian could, and as a result, he won more tournaments. But Petrosian could beat Larsen 2 out of every 3 decisive games. In a situation like that, which player is "better" than the other? Mileage can vary, but since chess is a one-on-one game, most people tend to think that the player that can beat the other one one-on-one is the stronger of the two. Which is part of why people prefer match championships to tournaments.

That's true. Actually, though it wasn't all in 1967, Fischer lost three straight games to Geller around that time:

Geller vs Fischer, 1965

Fischer vs Geller, 1967

I see your point, but I must concur with others on this site who think tournaments are the way to go, for styles make for (mis)matches at times (see Kramnik-Kasparov 2000, Kramnik-Shirov 199? and the first 9 games of Karpov-Kasparov 1984-5), and do not predict any more accurately chess strength than a tournament would. Match play and tournament play are simply different, and both are worthwhile assessments. Fischer, for all his craziness, was so unsure that the strongest player would win a match he demanded ridiculous changes to the system to ensure the "less" strong would have no chance of pulling off an upset.

Also matches are much more often poisoned by politics, enough so to question their ability to assess "chess strength."

And most "bunnies" nowadays are near 2700 in the top tournaments. Look at all the tremendous players that are not in the top 10!

It is harder now to find innovations -but I agree with you. I miss the old days when there were so many styles of play - don't forget Larsen! To some extent the computers are a cause. If you look at many positions in (for example) the Semi-Slav it is obvious the players are following computer moves.

Okay that is very true, but let's face it, having Bobby Fischer as your pt man for the western hemisphere is like having Jeff George. On paper he looks great but he winds up having lapses in big moments. I actually saw Jeff George just refuse to fall on a fumble here in Wash DC.

In Fischer's case many times on the great stage when he was at a big moment he messed up and lost it. Do we have to make a list?

62 Curacao
The Match w/ Reshevsky
62 Botvinnik game, not a blow up but he blows the endgame 66 This game, didnt he run off after Spassky showed him some moves? 67 Sousza
[long period of nothing]
72 1st match game w/ Spassky