Tournament opening help

Hello all i have the opportunity to play in an opportunity to play in a 5 round tournament with a time control of 90+30. I have three or four months to prepare openings. There is a great variety in skill starting from beginner(under 800)! to expert (one or two 2000 players) with about a dozen 1500 1600 and 1700`s. What i need is solid openings. As white i usually open with 1 e4, but what about d4, would you recamend this. As black against e4 i play the petroff the French or even the ruy lopez when the mood takes me. Against d4 though i have no really good strategy. In blitz i have played  d4 Nf6 c4 e5!É. But that is not good in must win games. The gruenfeld seems to dry, although i have been looking into the slav. what do you suggest. (i will be cutting down my time in the forums significantly to study for this tournament). thanks guys
CP 

Play what you feel comfortable with and have a good feel for. 1.e4 is fully respectable and those are all proven defenses to it that you're using. 

As for using the Slav as a defense to 1.d4, you can't go wrong with that. It's a fantastic defense - rich, yet fairly intuitive. It can get a bit tricky if you don't pay attention and allow yourself to get move-ordered. You also need to have a plan for the exchange version (which is not nearly as dry as many make it out to be - there's still plenty of scope to create imbalance)

If you have fritz or any other computer program ( i use fritz) go click on training and they should have a list of openings, and you can use flash cards.... here i'll just take pics so you can see what im talking about, very easy to prepare, and set your computer on very strong so the computer can make the best decisions and write down everything the computer does for about to 10-15 moves on one flash card then label it on both sides for example... (ruy lopez) and you start over with the computer set on ruy lopez and write down all the moves and highlight when the computer makes a different move then you run your engine to find out the best defense for that new move which you saw. and go thru the same process with all the other openings of your choosing... here... i'll just take photos and show you.... very simple, thats how i got really good at openings and when i play people who do something different i get happy because then when the game is over i plug it in my database and go over it then its nothing new anymorea and i know how to defend against it. 

And before you make a move doing this opening training you ALWAYS want to run the computer engine to get the very best moves and then you want to switch sides so you can see how it works then after that after a couple of times you will notice the patterns and then you'll have like 15 moves memorize in 30 different directions for one opening so that way you no when you play you at least you wont get killed in the opening part lol. and thats why i use tactics trainer and other tactic books and endgame books to cover the rest when i train, so i'm grounded in all three areas of the game... opening, middle and end then its all about tweaking the little stuff. 

Hope i helped you find an easy way to study openings and if you need anything hit me up bro. 

nice ideas! ok so you suggest using a computer? my engines might not work well. would you suggest Houdini stockfish or Komodo for this? I may or may not do it...because computers usually kill their opponents in the middlegame not the opening.

I just use it for preparation for the opening and heck yeah!!! stockfish and komodo and houdini are waaaay better engines than fritz although it doesnt really matter because all of them are very powerful, but this is a good technique to use to get your openings down pack, and like for me, i use this and keep the flash cards as foot notes so i have something easy to go back and look into, and the cool part is after doing this for so long, like the ruy lopez, sicilian, nimzo indian, trompovski, dutch vienna, i already have MEMORIZED like 30 different directions no matter what my opponent plays in these openings cause i already seen it before and know exactly how to react to it lol. thats how anand and carlsen and the best guys prepare so they can neutralize there opponents favorite openings. 

thats why i use computers, you wont believe how many high rated players i played and beat simply because i neautralized there openings then got an ACTIVE position. lol more active for me, more space for me, more space for me, more ideas i can come up with to win. 

well said, because computers will tell you the right answer but it wont tell you "WHY?" its the right answer, but yeah i have plenty of opening books, queens gambit, kings indian, chess openings for black, explained etc. i dont spend too much time studying the opening as much as i used to tho, i spend more time getting better tactically and one thing thats giving me a hard time but i will catch on is "POSITIONAL CHESS" because i use tactics so much and sacrificing like if you look at my last game i played on "standard" im so used to tactics i dont fully understand positional, making subtle moves that are killer moves, im trying to rap my head around that. and i am also still studying the endgame now, i feel like my openings are subperb i just have to catch up on the rest tactics and espically positional. 

Just curious...do you intend to spend the majority of your studying time on openings?

no i just said im studying other parts of the game, oh wait you mean the op? 

You can always do the nimzo-indian 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4

Nope, endgames i can study on my own. The reason i am studying openings is if i go astray in the opening i loose.

i dislike this, don't know why...

maybe...not so sure though, i will look into it. I personally think the slav is what i will do.

The Cambridge Springs Defense might suit you.