Ben Hinthorne rode the escalator at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center all by himself this weekend, grinning when he spotted his mother on an upper floor.

"Winner," blurted out the Seattle 9-year-old, smiling from under his baseball cap. "Winner winner, chicken dinner."

Ben had just won his third chess game during the six-round National Bert Lerner Elementary Championship, an annual event crowning the best young chess players in the country.

The competition this past weekend brought 2,200 chess players -- some as young as 4 -- to Pittsburgh from nearly every corner of the United States.

The competition was open to any child willing to come to Pittsburgh and pay a registration fee (between $40 and $80, depending on the time of registration).

And come they did. The convention center and surrounding streets teemed with children over the weekend, many wearing their team T-shirts and carrying special bags to hold chess pieces.

Chess popularity has been on the upswing recently, said chief tournament director Bill Snead, fueled by research showing chess can improve academic performance, cognitive reasoning, spatial thinking and a host of other indicators that are appealing to parents and schools.

"Does it make them better thinkers?" asked Mr. Snead. "The answer is yes."

Randy Bubolz, a chess coach from New Berlin, Wis., has built up a chess team of 385 kids spanning four different schools in his community of 30,000.

He traveled to Pittsburgh with 38 of his team members, some of whom drove 11 hours with their parents to make the trip.

They compete locally and regionally, he said, but "this is the prize. They see what they can do here and they're energized for the whole year."

There are side competitions, such as a speed "blitz" round and a four-person "bughouse" game with rules that Mr. Snead described as "wild" and "freaky."

But the masses come to participate in the competition's main event, which awards championship trophies in nine different categories. Sixth-grader Aleksandr A. Ostrovskiy of New York won the overall title last night.

Each player plays in all six rounds, with matches lasting up to three hours for those in kindergarten and first grade and four hours for older children. In between matches, a sophisticated computer program rates the players and determines their next opponent by skill level.

Parents of the youngest competitors -- those in kindergarten and first grade -- were shooed out of the playing room Saturday with an announcement of "kisses and hugs and let the kids play."

Having the parents within eyesight can be too distracting for children so young, said Mr. Snead.

In a cavernous room in the convention center where the older children played among dozens of rows of tables, many parents chose to watch from windows one floor above.

Mr. Bubolz, the Wisconsin chess coach, pulled out a pair of binoculars so that he was able to see his team members' individual chess boards.

Tom Peterson, whose 9-year-old son, Sam, plays on Mr. Bubolz's team, could see his son move the chess pieces and he dutifully wrote down each move in order to analyze the game later.

Sam started playing chess in kindergarten, he said, and practices about 3¹/₂ hours a week.

"Like piano, it helps discipline the mind," said Mr. Peterson. "I use d to beat him all the time. Now I only win a third of the time."

Ryan Polk, of Indianapolis, said chess has helped build confidence in his sons, 8-year-old Mitchell and 9-year-old Patrick.

"We just started playing as another game, like Monopoly, just playing for fun," he said. "We entered a tournament for fun, my older son liked it, and we kept going."

His sons practice four or five hours a week, he said, which is "four or five hours that they're not watching television or playing video games."

Patrick, a third-grader, only has to think for a second when asked whether he prefers chess or his other competitive activity, football.

"Chess," he said. "I like how you can learn the strategies. Your brain can have more thinking opportunities."