Being Committed

[lgas]

After discussing with a friend how the basic idea behind pot control is that you should keep the pot small when you aren't committed to it and try to grow the pot when you are committed, he pressed for a clear definition of committed-ness, as opposed to my attempts at simple examples... which is when I realized that while I have a pretty good idea in my head of when I'm committed and when I'm not, I don't know if I've ever read a clear discussion on if, either in books or on this forum. Is there some part of HPAP or TOP that covers the notion of pot committed-ness in detail, and I'm just forgetting it, or what?

If not, then let's discuss. (I'm aware that it's context dependent -- i.e. its different in limit vs. NL, ring vs tourney, etc but I figure its a general poker concept so it belongs in this forum).

A related concept that I've been thinking about is that folding in a situation where many would consider themselves to be committed is probably one of the places where some of the best laydowns can be made -- not that you'd want to get in the habbit of doing this often, but in situations where you have a flush vs. an unlikely boat or something like that, and the potential boat moves in on you for only 1/8 of the pot, you generally have to call as long as you don't think he has the boat more than 7/8ths of the time... but if you can be certain that he does THIS time, then you can make a great laydown.... of course most reasonable players won't push into you when you are clearly committed if they aren't holding the nuts.... but that's just one more argument that you're beat... so I imagine playing in committed or near-committed situations is one of the times when reads become most critical... of course this may apply more to B&M than anything else, but I think it's a fairly interesting topic.

P.S. I tried search, but I can't think of any good terms to narrow the results with and there are way too many mentions of "+pot +committed"

P.P.S. Might as well just skip the jokes about fear of committment etc, they're too obvious.