Chess
"Vronsky could not answer questions, could not speak to anyone. He turned, and without picking up his cap that had fallen off, walked away from the race course, not knowing where he was going." (Lev Tolstoy)
Over the Board
Next to my academic activity, I used to be an avid chess player, particularly in team competitions. I was awarded the title of International Master at the age of 18; however, it took me about the same time (17 years) to become an International Grandmaster (GM). I obtained by chess education at Klub Kölner Schachfreunde ("KKS"), played for many years at Godesberger SK and then for Schachfreunde Berlin in the German Bundesliga. During my time in the Netherlands, I played for De Stukkenjagers and Leidsche Schaakgenootschap in the Netherlands. Finally, I regularly lined up for Šahovski Klub Brda (Split) in the Croatian team championship.
Below you can find some of my games with my annotations. Including some losses, of course: they tend to be more interesting. Look above all at my game against Dutch IM Xander Wemmers! Apart from this lost game, I also like my four games against long-time world-class player Loek van Wely.
Many of my games are replayable online, too. Some of my more notable victories are replayable here (Sprenger-Kasimdzhanov, Bundesliga 2002/03) and here (Sprenger-Shirov, Bundesliga 2005/06), while this intense game shows overall a good defensive showing against a strong opponent (Wojtaszek-Sprenger, Bundesliga 2018/19).
I have also an avid interest in the psychology and "phenomenology" of chessplaying and decision-making over the board. Here you can find an article about this topic, illustrated with a game from the first-person perspective (in German).
Composition
Some years ago, I decided to stop regular tournament activity and I turned to composing endgame studies. They are, in a nutshell, stylized endgames where White has to find the unique way to draw or to win, dependent on the stipulation.
The artistic value of these compositions is promoted by the depth, the visual beauty and the economy of the (often surprising, but always unique) solution. In many endgame studies, there are also thematic tries ("false trails") which look almost like the solution, but fail to a clever defense by Black.
Below you can download the six studies that I submitted for the WCCI 2019-21, i.e., the world championship for individual composers which takes place every three years. Most of them made it into the FIDE Album 2019-21.
I owe a lot to my lessons from chess composition Grandmaster and current Vice World Champion Martin Minski, with whom I also collaborate regularly.