Avoid becoming pot committed

In poker, you are pot committed when you have bet an amount such that you will be mathematically obligated to call no matter what. As an extreme example, you are playing heads up and have a 1 million dollar stack, you raise preflop with JJ to 990,000 and your opponent calls. The flop comes AKx. Your opponent flips over his hand, and has AA. He bets his remaining 10k. You are dead to running jacks or qT, however you are getting 1500-1, you have to call even given your remote odds. That is a little absurd of an example, but will hopefully make the point clear enough that even a poker newb can understand.

In debate, people often become pot committed. By this I mean they take an argument and turn it into a make or break round deciding issue when it need not be. For example, lets take framework.

The aff says RPS + Climate. Neg says eco doomsaying/reps K. Aff says "wrong forum, no K's". Neg now responds with some K's of framework, various cheating etc. Basically what has happend is the aff has raised too much- they have made framework into a round deciding issue- whoever wins the framework will win.

Now why do you raise in poker? There are many reasons, but 2 that are relevant here are value (you have the best hand and want money) and to make your opponent fold (because they may have a better hand and thus you win). Framework falls into the second category- you are trying to push your opponent off a potentially strong argument. If you had the nuts to answer their reps K you wouldn't need fwork obv (this should be self evident).

In poker, when making a bet/raise to get someone to fold, the goal is to bet the precise minimum amount needed to make them fold. For example, your opponent will either fold or go all in. If you bet all your chips, you will win once, and lose it all once. If instead you bet a smaller amount, you win once, and lose a smaller amount when they go all in. So betting the smallest amount that will get them to fold is the goal (I am obviously ignoring a LOT of outside considerations here for simplicity so nits please avoid hitting the comment button).

So to take this concept to debate, your framework argument should be enough to get them to fold, but not enough that you incur significant costs if they decide to raise. A more moderate framework argument will allow you to avoid many of the generic framework offense teams read like
-role playing bad
-exclusion bad style args
-K's of democracy/citizenship
-cheese theory RVI's

Now, the neg can still obv read all this. But all you need to do is no link it in the 1AR.

Other examples of becoming pot committed:
-straight link turning a disad with a unidimensional uniqueness argument- something like "companies fear future regulation more". Then the neg CP's out of that in the 2NC. D'oh.
-Reading a reps K of the 1AC advantage, and then not adequately addressing add ons/disad turns that don't link to your K
-Reading 1 disad in the 1NC with no counterplan
-Extending 2 strategies in the block, one of which has no credibility/could never be gone for

Now, one of the things that seperates mediocre debaters from great debaters is that great debaters can detect when their opponents have over extended themselves and become pot committed and exploit it.