{
  "id": "pot-committed.priced-in",
  "term": "pot committed",
  "sense": "priced-in",
  "pos": "adjective",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 16,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A thing whose own past actions put in so much that continuing is worth more than stopping: a real wall, because what it put in can be won.",
  "folk_gloss": "in poker, having put so much into the pot that folding is no longer the sound play",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "set.fix",
      "wall.range-end",
      "past.temporal",
      "put.placement",
      "win.victory",
      "continue.action",
      "value.worth",
      "stop.action",
      "action.deed",
      "real.actual",
      "against.opposition",
      "reach.action",
      "agency.capacity"
    ],
    "interaction": "Each voluntary stake is small and reversible when made, but together they move the wall that used to permit stopping; because the stakes are still in play the wall is real, and continuing is the one action its own reach still favours.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "a wall built from one's own increments",
      "an exit closed by price, not by impossibility",
      "commitment that is correct, not a bias"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In no-limit hold'em, a player with only a few chips left behind after a large bet is called pot-committed: the pot odds make calling correct with most hands.",
      "domain": "games"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "sunk-cost.path",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "sunk cost is past work that sets no wall yet is read as one; pot-committed stakes are still in play, so the wall is real"
    },
    {
      "id": "burned-bridges.path",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "a burned bridge makes return impossible in one act; pot-committed makes stopping unsound by accumulated stakes"
    },
    {
      "id": "painting-yourself-into-a-corner.self-set",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "the painter's walls go unread; the pot-committed player can price the wall exactly"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "pot commitment",
    "pot committed",
    "potcommitted"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-28",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-pot-committed.priced-in"
}