Beating Komodo on low-medium levels (5-7)?

I find myself having quite a bit of trouble versus certain openings Komodo uses. From playing quite a couple games now against Komodo 5 / Komodo 6 (with a few games against K7 and K8) I find that the engine uses a couple openings over and over again. These openings are mostly non-standard openings and I find myself often in trouble against them, falling either to some early tactics (usually losing an early piece or getting really bad pawn structures). When I survive the early phase of those games I get into drawn out endgames (sometimes drawing against Komodos rook, as the engine seems not to be able to mate with rook and king properly...).

The openings I encountered so far, that K6 usually plays against me I find myself having the most trouble with:

a) e3 (Van't Kruijs Opening)

b) d3 (Mieses Opening)

c) Nc3 (Van Geet Opening)

Against these three I tried a couple a lot of different moves (in no particular order, moves like Nf6, d6, e6, e5...)

The engine likes to follow up those openings with a quick entrance of the Queen (against e5 the engine usually tries scholar's mate, which I usually can fend off, but after 10-15 moves my position looks like a piece of swiss cheese )...

I try to either develop soundly or chase the Queen away, and usually fall victim to some stupid tactic I overlook...

With White I usually play e4 at the moment, usually meeting one of the following opposing defenses:

a) Nf6 (Alekhine Defense) --> I tend to get drawn into chasing the Knight around and then at some point being ahead a piece I blunder two pieces away... if I don#t go for the Knight, my positions get really cramped and the opposing attack tends to get quite strong.

b) d5 (Scandinavian Defense) --> usually with early trading off Queens and minor pieces and quickly getting into drawn out endgames that go either way.

I tried to book up on these openings using a book on opening theory, just to learn, that those openings aren't regarded as "serious" openings... yes... that's what I learned some 25 years ago as well... still I find myself at the losing end when the engine uses those openings more often than I like.

My rating bounces at the moment in the range from 1300 - 1450.

Anyone out there who has some basic strategic advice to get an edge in these 5 mentioned openings?

Yes, I played a long streak yesterday and saw that the low level Komodos constantantly become worse and worse literally by the minute. At the moment I'm playing Komodo 10 and beating it more than 50% of the time quite easily, so the low level Komodos seem to have been tuned down quite a bit.

Komodo 6 plays really horrible since yesterday it seems, its rating dropped within an hour by at least 400 - 500 points.

From what I have noticed, the different Komodo versions tend to use slightly different openings, especially in the lower ranks, Komodo likes to play off-beat openings, which want to bring the player out of book, so to speak.

I have purchased a book on irregular openings today (Taming wild openings by Eric Schiller) and began reading up on some of those weird variants the engine likes (for example Grob opening... it looks so bad... just don't fall into the trap of taking that pawn too early... the opponent's queen will most likely win your bishop in return...), the main advice seems to be: "Play solid, develop and wait for the irregular openings to make mistakes".

Some update on my playing experience:

After the engine change I play mostly against Komodo 9 and Komodo 10, the lower levels play really stupid (for example I noticed the following for the new Komodo 1 - 7: not recapturing obvious captures, missing even to me obvious plays, obvious tendency to play for a draw, playing way to defensive, like tucking away pieces around the king in a corner...).

Komodo 9 / 10 play their standard repertoire of the above mentioned openings, basically comparable to Komodo 6 / 7 before the change.

One thing I noticed about the engines playing weird openings is, that you can't really practice playing against some of the more normal mainlines (I think out of ~1500 games I played against the engine I might have played a handful against or with a Ruy Lopez for example).

As much as I enjoy playing against Komodo, it gets a bit tedious to play the same old Scandinavian Defense/Alekhines Defense over and over again... so much so, that I begin to avoid e4 at the moment (which is a pitty, as I really want to explore different King's Gambit lines more intensively... but the engine only plays e5 in maybe 5% of the games... which seems strange.

When playing against much higher engine levels or human players I get ripped to pieces, due to lack of practice in mainlines (though opponents playing a 98% accurate Sicilian seemed very suspicious for a 1350 rated opponent... basically one of the reasons, why I prefer playing the engine).

The balancing of the engines seems bad at the moment, though to really make progress. The ratings have huge gaps in them, Komodo 1 - 6 all lump around 600, 7 - 10 range from 800 to 1300 and then there's a jump to 1500? And the difference between Komodo 10 and Komodo 11 is really noticeable.

I'd like to see a more gradual increase of difficulty, switching to higher levels always feels like starting all over again... ah well...

I just played my first game against komodo today on level 1. It actually beat me once when there was a mate in three for me because I ran out of time. It plays extremely quickly.