Esther

When chess players consider a game, they look at both:

'Points' - the worth of the pieces a play has on the board, and,
'Position' - how strategically these pieces are placed.

The Queen is the most powerful piece on the board, (which is quite appropriate with regards to this story), but a strategically 'positioned' pawn may be the difference between winning and losing.

In the story of Esther, the drama revolves around 'position'. Even before the tension in the story is mentioned, all the main players in the action to follow have been strategically 'position' in the introduction. This theme of 'position' is brought out most beautifully in the correspondence between Mordecai and Esther where he asks: "Who knows whether you have come to the Kingdom for such a time as this?"

The identity of this master 'chess player' is not explicitly stated, but given the place of the story in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the answer is obvious. It's this subtlety in the story that is its great strength because it's usually in this same subtle way that the unseen 'chess player' of Esther is still acting today, working out His strategy until the final victory is His.