They Took My Rings, They Took My Rolex

I like to think of myself as a rather competent Rifter pilot. This means I take it very seriously when someone else beats me in a Rifter duel. Fortunately, there haven't been many such cases recently and I can only remember three pilots who did that: my corpmate Arquebie, Amamake resident Drek Grapper and, most recently, Brick0Joe, a member of The Python Cartel.
Our first encounter took place in Amamake, right after I had killed and podded some poor chap in an Incursus. I only suffered shield damage and so decided not to leave when Brick0Joe's Rifter started approaching me. Once in scram range, we both employed the same tactics of staying rather far away and shooting with Barrage ammo. But my armour was dropping alarmingly fast while my opponent was still holding quite well. Also, he was faster than me and I overloaded my afterburner too late to get away.
As my Rifter went down, I typed a sincere "gf" and tried to figure out why I had lost. There could be several reasons why I was overpowered: skills (I haven't yet got some of those lengthy level V gunnery ones), modules (I did find out, for example, that Brick0Joe fits Arbalest rocket launchers whereas I usually prefer cheaper ones) or implants (I only had a cheap one giving +3% to small turrets' damage).
I decided to eliminate the difference in modules and try again, this time also without leftover damage from an earlier fight. I got the modules hauled and requested a duel with Brick0Joe who kindly agreed. I warped to Gulmogorod, chose a safespot and waited for my opponent who soon showed up.
This fight went a little bit better: I got him into structure but then went down. After exchanging gf's I asked Brick about implants and he said he was using some without elaborating. So, I guess, a combined difference in skills (I did not ask but suspect his are maxed out) and implants, made him far more lethal than me.
Fortunately, this means I will be able to catch up eventually. In the meantime, I know which fights to avoid.

Strategy-Shmategy

Sometimes, usually after relatively long winning streaks, I put my common sense offline and overheat the part of my brain that seeks violence above anything else.
That was the case the other day when, after killing 10 ships without a single loss, I took my Rifter to Gulmogorod where I stumbled upon a Caracal sitting in a belt. Its pilot, Norst, had a nice track record on Battleclinic and it was obvious he was baiting me.
Well, that was not going to stop me from engaging the Caldari cruiser. I laughed manically in my head as I warped to the belt, tackled the target and unleashed the fury of my overloaded guns. Pretty soon I started pulsing my armour repairer to try and stay alive as his missiles were hitting me hard. His shield broke when I entered structure, but a couple rounds later my Rifter blew up.
I warped out and exchanged "gf"s with Norst. And I meant it: that fight was more fun than the ten previous engagements which I had won. I know for sure that I would have killed him in my Wolf, although I doubt he would have sought a fight in that case.
There were also a couple of interesting engagements that ended without killmails. The first was a Hurricane I attacked at a station in my Wolf: after I killed a few of his drones, he stopped attacking me and docked in 30 seconds. The second was a ratting Rupture which managed to escape from me because it had an Afterburner fit instead of a Microwarp Drive. I actually caught up with it while it was aligning, but failed to notice my scrambler was off by that time.
Anyway, I guess I'm back in cautious mode, looking for more kills to improve my stats.