Dion M. Martinez was a Cuban–American chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 master.

He was regarded as one of the strongest chess players in Philadelphia. There he played several matches against James Mason

James Mason (chess player)

James Mason was a famous chess player and writer. He was born in Kilkenny in Ireland. His original name is unknown: he was adopted as a child and only took the name James Mason when he and his family moved to the United States in 1861...

 (4 : 5 in 1874 and 3 : 1 in 1875), Wilhelm Steinitz

Wilhelm Steinitz

Wilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian and then American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. From the 1870s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz was effectively the champion earlier...

 (0 : 7 in November 1882, 2.5 : 4.5 in December 1882, and 1 : 10 in 1883), and Johannes Zukertort

Johannes Zukertort

Johannes Hermann Zukertort was a leading chess master of German-Polish-Jewish origin. He was one of the leading world players for most of the 1870s and 1880s, and lost to Wilhelm Steinitz in the World Chess Championship 1886, which is generally seen as the first World Chess Championship match, he...

 (3.5 : 9.5 in 1884).

He took 9th at Philadelphia 1876 (Fourth American Chess Congress

American Chess Congress

The American Chess Congress was a series of chess tournaments held in the United States, a predecessor to the current U.S. Chess Championship. It had nine editions, the first played in 1857 and the last in 1923.-First American Chess Congress :...

, Mason won), and tied for 17-18th at New York 1889 (Sixth American CC, Max Weiss

Max Weiss

Miksa Weisz was an Austrian chess player born in the Kingdom of Hungary.Weiss was born in Sereď. Moving to Vienna, he studied mathematics and physics at the university, and later taught those subjects....

 and Mikhail Chigorin

Mikhail Chigorin

Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin also was a leading Russian chess player...

won). His pen-portrait (jointly with other participants of the tournament) was published on page 8 of the New York Times, 16 June 1889, under the heading "The Chessboard Kings".