Offside Rule - Usually, soccer rules are easy to grasp even by someone that's watching the game for the first time in his life. You foul someone, you get penalized. You hit him in the box, his team gets a penalty. The ball goes beyond the marked area, it's an out throw. Everything is really basic, except the soccer offside rules. This is one tricky rule and although it's not in the original soccer cookbook (as in, it was added over the course of time) it's a much needed one, so that's why I'll try to explain it a bit.

The offside trap rule only applies to attackers and it is meant to regulate both team's positions on the pitch. Without an offside rule, an attacker could simply stay in the other team's penalty box, receive balls and try to score. This would pin down the defenders and they would virtually be unable to play anywhere else outside their own penalty box, since their main job would be marking the striker that is lazying off in there.

It's also a known fact that attackers generally don't have the same effort requirements on the pitch, since they only need to participate in one phase of the game (the offense), unlike defenders and midfielders who have to participate in both the offense and defense, thus having to run more. So now that you know WHY the soccer offside rule is there, let's see WHAT it is anyway.

There are two phases of the offside soccer rule: the offside position and the offside trap sanction. If an attacker is in an offside position, he will only be sanctioned if the ball is heading towards him and he has an intention to play it. Otherwise, if he skips the game, he will not be called, despite having a clear offside position.

An attacker is in an offside position if he is closer to the other team's goal line than the ball and the second last opponent. You'll often hear people say "he was in offside, because he was further towards the goal than the LAST defender". This is actually not a correct statement, since this doesn't take the goalkeeper into account, so the LAST defender is actually the second last, as the above mentioned offside rule shows.

So let's say that team "Yellow" is attacking and "Red" is defending. The ball is at the feet of Yellow's midfielder and the Yellow attacker is a few meters further to the Red team's goal line, than the last Red defender. Then the Yellow attacker is in an offside position, but the referee will only call an offside sanction if the Yellow midfielder passes the ball to the Yellow attacker while the latter is in the offside position.

If you're new to soccer, the offside rule might need a bit of getting used to, but you'll soon be able to spot exactly how and why someone was called offside if you watch a few matches. Note that sometimes, the position of the attacker and the other team's defender are so close together, that the referee will have hard time deciding whether or not an offside should be called.

Niv Orlian is the author and the owner of http://www.soccer-fans-info.com a website that provides information on various topics related to soccer such as the history of soccer, rules, famous soccer players, real time news, statistics, and training guides.

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Dog Training - A Dog's Nature

Dogs are surprisingly complex creatures.

Some official estimates of the number of breeds reaches as high as 800 in Western countries alone. Even given that distinguishing one breed from another can be carried to absurd extremes, the variety is astonishing from a human perspective, who have, perhaps, a dozen 'breeds'.

Complicating the picture still further is the well-known fact that dogs have descended from wolves but began domestic interaction with humans over 10,000 years ago. As a consequence, there are behaviours that develop regardless of circumstances and some that are as unique as the human the dog is paired with. Still, some common traits stand out.

Dogs are predators.

That doesn't mean they necessarily hunt and attack every passing cat or rat, but the capacity is always in them. With acute hearing and head muscles that allow precise orientation of their ears, dogs can pick up a range of sounds and locate the source quickly and with high accuracy.

A dog's field of vision is higher than that of humans. Their field of view has been estimated from 180-270 degrees, by comparison to a human's 100-150 degrees, allowing them to track events better.

And, of course, there's that famous sense of smell. Citing figures such as having 25 times as many scent-receptor cells or being able to sense concentrations 100 million times smaller than humans conveys the fact one way.

Another is to report behaviour. Golden Retrievers, for example, can smell gophers through two feet of packed snow and a foot of frozen earth. And, they'll dig through it to get to the gopher. That's predatory behaviour.

Dogs are social animals.

That's common knowledge, of course. But, though known, it's often ignored. Individuals will often lock a lone dog away in a garage or pen, or on a rope in the yard for long periods. This isolation from contact with humans and other animals invariably leads to fear and/or aggression and other forms of maladjustment. Dogs need companionship in order to develop healthy behaviour.

Isolating a dog for brief periods can be a useful training technique. Fear of expulsion from the pack can incense overly assertive, alpha-status seeking dogs into alignment with the trainer's goals. In any human-dog pair, the human must be the alpha (leader). The alternative is property destruction, human frustration and unsafe conditions for people and dogs.

But excessive time devoid of social interaction with another dog, the human, or even a friendly cat harms the dog's psychology and leads to unwanted behaviour. Even guard dogs have to be able to distinguish between external 'threats' and members of its own 'pack'.

Dogs are exploratory.

Like the two-year-old humans at roughly their same mental level, dogs learn by exploring their environment. And like those humans, they can engage in destructive behaviour. Dogs are no respecters of property. Training and an appropriately selected set of objects and suitable area can channel that behaviour into something acceptable to humans and healthy for the dog.

Providing toys with characteristics very distinct from human property, such as rawhide bones rather than rubber balls that are hard to tell from children's, leads to less confusion and misbehaviour. In many cases, however, the problem is solved by scent. The dog's toys may look like the child's, but smell very different.

Some amount of digging may be inevitable as part of the dog's exploration. Be prepared to patch holes in lawn if the dog is unsupervised for very long. Plants can usually be protected with cayenne pepper paste, bitter apple and other preparations.

Dogs are scavengers

Dogs will eat deer droppings, even when they have perfectly sound and ample diets. They'll chew on dead rats, eat grass and ingest a wide variety of things that their own experience shows causes upset stomachs. And they'll repeat the behaviour day after day.

Acknowledging their limited ability to connect cause and effect when those are separated in time is a must in order to keep them healthy and safe.

Recognizing a dog's nature, and working within in it rather than against it leads to less frustration for both human and dog. Enjoying the beneficial aspects, such as spontaneous dog hugs (leaning into a leg), paw offering and a head laid on the lap are just a few of the rewards.

Valerie Dancer - I have owned dogs for 42 years. Learning to train from my mother who trained to county level. Over the years I have found that the old ways of training are not always the best, that praise is the best form of training, and the younger the dog, the easier it is to train. http://www.dogtrainingproblems.biz.

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German Shepherds were among the first dogs trained for police work- beginning around 1900 in Ghent, Belgium.

Dogs body cells contain the most pairs of chromosomes (heredity- carrying structures) of any mammal- 39 pairs.

There is an old Chinese belief that if a person owns a good and faithful dog that the dog will sacrifice itself to Death when Death demands a member of its immediate family.

The most decorated U.S. dog during World War II was a German Shepherd/Husky/ Collie mix named Chips. He also served as a guard dog in North America and later earned a Silver Star for capturing a machine gun nest during the invasion of Sicily.

Dogs have been used to determine whether twins are identical or fraternal because identicals have the same scent, but fraternals do not, no matter how much they may look alike.

The Latin word for faithful is Fido? Could this possibly have any connection with the fact that so many dogs are named this?

If an old or sick dog does not shake itself after getting up that this is a sign of bad overall health? Each dog shakes itself to get every muscle and tendon back into perfect place after waking up.

A dog can survey an area between 200 to 270 degrees, depending on the shape of its skull and the positioning of its eyes, compared to the average of 100 degrees for a human being.

Due to the popularity of lap dogs in ancient Rome, Julius Caesar once mused if Roman women had ceased to have children in lieu of their new four-legged companions.

Article written and reprinted with permission of: http://www.pedigreedpups.com/
Purebred Dogs, Puppies and Dog Breeders - "Your New Best Friend"

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.

Debbie Ray, owner of http://www.pedigreedpups.com and http://www.total-german-shepherd.com, is a lifelong animal lover and dog enthusiast. Interested in more dog information? Training and health tips? Thinking about getting a purebred dog? Interested in the German Shepherd Dog in particular? Need to promote your dog related website and get additional in bound links? Check out pedigreedpups.com , total-german-shepherd.com or http://www.pedigreeddogs.com (purebred dog breed directory) for more information.

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The terms "bull" and "bear" are often associated with vertical spreads. This leads most people to think of vertical spreads as directional plays, which is true. Vertical spreads can also be used to take advantage of two other potential trading opportunities - time decay and volatility movement.

Using Vertical Spreads to Take Advantage of Time Decay

If you are looking for a fully hedged way to take advantage of time decay, a vertical spread can be an excellent tool. It has a limited profit potential, but a limited loss scenario for both the buyer and the seller.

At-the-money options have more extrinsic value than their similar month in-the-money or out-of-the-money options. Since it is an option's extrinsic value that decays over time, you can set up a vertical spread by selling an at-the-money option and buying either an out-of-the-money option (creating a credit spread) or an in-the-money option (creating a debit spread). If the stock holds tight to the out-of-the-money option, the option's extrinsic value will decay at a faster rate than the in-the-money option or out-of-the-money option. This is because the at-the-money option has more total extrinsic value to decay in the same amount of time as the others.

Creating the vertical spread by selling an at-the-money option and buying an out-of-the-money or in-the-money option as a hedge looks like a good idea. Now, there are a couple choices. Should you do the put or call spread? Should you buy or sell it? You should base your decision of what to do on which way you think the stock will move. Although you are playing for time decay and you are assuming an overall lack of movement, you cannot expect the stock not to move at all. So even though you are playing time decay, you still want to form an opinion on in which direction the stock is most likely to move. Doing this, you have now given yourself another way of making the trade profitable. You are playing for a lack of movement but now you can still win if you pick the right direction. This scenario presents you with two ways to win and only one to lose.

Now that you have picked which at-the-money strike you are going to sell and you have picked your anticipated stock position, you still have a decision to make. Do you do the call vertical spread or the put vertical spread? Remember, both the vertical call spread and vertical put spreads allow you to participate in either stock direction. For the bulls, you can buy a vertical call spread or sell a vertical if you think that the stock will go up.

For the bears, you can buy a vertical put spread or sell a vertical call spread.

There are two choices to decide from for each direction. One is a purchase. The other is a sale. The best way to decide which one to do, other than your own style or comfort, is a simple risk/reward analysis. By selecting an at-the-money option to sell as part of a vertical spread, an investor can execute a time decay play with a hedged position.

Using Vertical Spreads as a Volatility Play

Vertical spreads are also usable as a volatility play. We stated earlier that an at-the-money option has more extrinsic value than other options in its expiration month. This is due to a number of contributing factors including time and largely volatility. An option's dollar sensitivity to movements in implied volatility is known as Vega. Obviously, an at-the-money option will have a higher Vega (volatility sensitivity) than an in-the-money or out-of-the-money option in the same month.

As volatility increases, the at-the-money option will increase in price to a greater degree than will an in-the-money or out-of-the-money option. As volatility increases, the at-the-money option will increase in price to a greater degree than will an in-the-money or out-of-the-money option with a lesser Vega.

Conversely, the at-the-money option will lose value at a greater rate than an in-the-money or out-of-the-money option should implied volatility decrease. The question is how to use the vertical spread to take advantage of anticipated movements in implied volatility. Remember, the vertical spread affords you the luxury of being hedged on either side of the trade - both as a buyer and as a seller of the spread.

If you think that implied volatility is likely to increase, you can set up a vertical spread by buying an at-the-money option and selling either the in-the-money or out-of-the-money option against it. If you feel that implied volatility will decrease, you can set up a vertical spread by selling an at-the-money option and buy either an out-of-the-money or an in-the-money option against it.

To set it up, you would follow the same guidelines for setting up a vertical spread to take advantage of time decay. Decide which direction you feel the stock would most likely move. If you feel it is likely to rise, you must decide between buying a vertical call spread and selling a vertical put spread.

Either way, the spread will have to be constructed with the at-the-money option being long if you feel volatility will increase or short if you feel volatility will decrease. If you feel the stock would most likely fall, you will have to decide between buying a vertical put spread and selling a vertical call spread. Either way, the spread must be constructed with the short option being the at-the-money.

As you can see, the vertical spread is not restricted to directional scenarios. It is very versatile allowing the investor several choices among a diverse group of potential uses. It also affords limited risk, albeit limited profit potential, to the buyer and the seller.

Ron Ianieri enjoyed 14 years of experience as a floor trader on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, including four years as the lead market maker in DELL computer options one of the busiest books in history. He is currently chief options strategist and co-founder of The Options University, an educational company that teaches investors how to make consistent profits using options while limiting risk.

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