It was this toughness that helped the Telopea Park School student to topple his opponent in a game that took more than three hours.

Justin, 14, of Pearce, was declared the winner of this year's ACT junior chess championship yesterday.

The runner-up, Emma Guo, 13, of Macgregor, is the under-14 girls' rapid play champion.

The championship, at Campbell High School, involved 61 young competitors. They battled it out from Monday, playing three games a day, each game taking up to three hours.

Justin likes chess because ''it concentrates your mind, it's like good mental training''.

A player since he was five, he most admires Russian grandmaster Anatoly Karpov.

This year's contest attracted 10 players with chess ratings higher than 1000 and a further 20 rated between 600 and 1000.

Justin's rating is higher than 1660; grandmaster level is about 2500.

The event included some of Australia's top junior players.

Besides Emma, under-16 junior problem solving champion Alan Setiabudi, 15, of Kambah, and his sister, Megan, 11, the under-14 Australian girls' champion, also played.

All three players are to represent Australia at the upcoming world youth chess championship in Vietnam.

In addition to the ACT junior championship, there was an invitational tournament on Tuesday in which four of Canberra's top junior players went head-to-head in a round robin.

They were too highly rated to compete in the championship and so competed against each other to act as role models for the other players.

Under-18 national champion Junta Ikeda played the under-14 national champion, Yi Yuan, and top players Michael Wei and Andrew Brown.

Michael and Yi tied for first place, but Michael, 18, was declared the winner because he had beaten Yi, 13, earlier in the day.

President of the ACT Junior Chess League Charles Bishop said the tournament had attracted a lot of new talent this year, with about 25 per cent of the contenders girls younger than 12.

Chess was an increasingly popular game for young Canberrans.

''There are additional benefits related to the processing of higher level strategies, plans, thinking through consequences, those kinds of things,'' he said.

''It forces you to work though consequences of what you're about to do. It teaches kids to be thoughtful and patient in their approach to life, and sometimes that's very good.''