Tournament opening help

You asked about engines.... at the moment Stockfish DD is the strongest free engine. Came in second in the TCEC engine tournament this year behind the latest pay version of Komodo.  

Good luck in your tournament. Hope you find a couple openings you're comfortable with that suit your style.

I have the free version of stockfish, not stockfish DD though and older version of stockfish 4 as well as houdini 1.5 and Komodo 5. I like Komodo's openings better, but the other engines seem to be stronger.

Far as I know all stockfish engines are free. Stockfish DD is just the lastest version. In memory of Don Dailey one of the writers of Komodo who recently died. Stockfish DD is available for download from the stockfish site....

Any of these engines will do just fine.

If you want a positional line agianst 1.d4 that isn't overloaded with theory, give the Stonewall and Classical Dutch a whirl.  You can't pre-meditate a Stonewall, you will lose!

A few rules of thumb in the Stonewall:

1) Don't play ...d5 if White can still put his Bishops on f4 and d3

2) Black's pawn structure is very fluid...don't just assume they sit on light squares for ever.  e5 and f4 are both typical pawn breaks.

3) Only play c6 when White has played c4.  Having Nc6 available in certain lines is an advantage.

4) When White goes Nh3 instead of Nf3, switch gears and play a Classical, going for e5 instead of d5, making f4 unavailable for the White Knight

Some examples of lines and move orders:

1.d4 f5 2.g3 (2.c4 Nf6 3.g3 e6 4.Bg2 c6! and now if 5.Nh3, then 5...d6 while if White plays something else, then 5...d5 OR 2.c4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e6 4.Nf3 Bb4! with an improved version of the Nimzo while 4...d5 is a mistake because of 5.Bf4, 6.e3, and 7.Bd3) 2...Nf6 3.Bg2 e6 4.Nf3 (4.c4 c6!) d5 5.O-O Bd6! (again, no c6 until c4 is played) 6.c4 c6 7.b3 (The main line, 7.Bf4 you take via 7...Bxf4, ruining White's pawns - Rule of thumb is, don't allow the trade of Dark-Squared Bishops unless you can do structural damage to White) 7...Qe7! (Stopping Ba3 for now) 8.Bb2 (or 8.a4 a5! 9.Ba3, but White is wasting a lot of time to trade Bishops) b6 9.Qc1 intending 10.Ba3.  Here you allow it, as White is wasting a lot of time just to remove a Bishop.