Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

If you've been in the game 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy

Written by Warren Buffett b. 1930 · American investor; longtime chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
Verified against the primary source — though Buffett presented the line as a poker saying, not as his own coinage. In copyright

Buffett wrote this exact sentence in Berkshire Hathaway’s Chairman’s Letter dated 29 February 1988 ↗, closing his retelling of Ben Graham’s “Mr. Market” parable. But he introduced it with “As they say in poker” — and Quote Investigator ↗ finds the proverb already in print in 1979, so this is the phrasing Buffett published rather than a saying he invented.

Last verified 4 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“If you've been in the game 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy” Warren Buffett, Chairman's Letter — 1987, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., dated 29 February 1988. Buffett introduced the line as a poker saying ("As they say in poker"); Quote Investigator documents the proverb already in print in 1979 and finds no known coiner.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Warren E. Buffett / Berkshire Hathaway Inc.). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Warren Buffett — American investor & chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Theme: "If you've been in the game 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If you've been in the game 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The primary source

Work
Chairman’s Letter — 1987
Author
Warren E. Buffett, Chairman of the Board, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Dated
29 February 1988
Passage
Marketable Securities — Permanent Holdings, in the “Mr. Market” discussion

Indeed, if you aren’t certain that you understand and can value your business far better than Mr. Market, you don’t belong in the game. As they say in poker, ‘If you’ve been in the game 30 minutes and you don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy.’ Chairman’s Letter, 29 Feb 1988

Buffett’s own four-word framing — “As they say in poker” — is the tell: he presents the line as received wisdom, and italicises you’re for the turn of the knife.

Chairman’s letter
Read the full 1987 Chairman’s Letter on berkshirehathaway.com
Chairman’s Letter — 1987, berkshirehathaway.com

How the saying travelled

  • 1979 — the earliest currently known appearances. The Aggressive Conservative Investor by Martin J. Whitman and Martin Shubik prints it as a chapter epigraph credited to a “POKER PROVERB” (ADS-L citation ↗); Quote Investigator ↗ logs three further 1979 instances and notes earlier examples are likely to exist.
  • 29 February 1988 — Buffett publishes the familiar wording in the Chairman’s Letter for 1987 ↗, expressly attributing it to poker rather than to himself.
  • April 1988 — Quote Investigator ↗ documents a long excerpt of the letter running in the New York Times on 5 April 1988, and the saying being circulated again as a freestanding quotation on 10 April 1988.
  • Today — Wikiquote ↗ lists it among Buffett’s sourced letters-to-shareholders quotations, cited to the 1987 letter; loose variants that drop poker entirely now circulate alongside it.
In copyright

The wording is documented in a letter dated 29 February 1988 — long after the pre-1931 US public-domain cutoff — so the letter is in copyright. Berkshire publishes the letters free to read while noting on its letters archive ↗ that they include copyrighted material reproduced with permission; the short extract above is quoted for verification and comment.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What gets this wrong

The attribution itself is sound — Buffett wrote the sentence. The trap is what people take that to mean: he wrote it inside quotation marks, as something other poker players say.

Warren Buffett popularizer, not author

Buffett introduced the line with “As they say in poker” in his 1987 Chairman’s Letter ↗, making no claim to have invented it. Quote Investigator ↗ concludes that he “did help to popularize the aphorism about poker, but he did not create it,” and that by 1979 or earlier the expression was being used by investors.

Martin J. Whitman & Martin Shubik 1979, labelled “Poker Proverb”

Their 1979 book The Aggressive Conservative Investor carries it as a freestanding epigraph credited only to a “POKER PROVERB”: “If after ten minutes at the poker table you do not know who the patsy is — you are the patsy” (ADS-L citation ↗). They were quoting it too. Quote Investigator calls the 1979 instances the earliest currently known while noting that earlier examples are likely to exist.

the “half an hour” variant misquote

A heavily shared version reads “If you’ve been playing poker for half an hour and you still don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy” — as on Goodreads ↗, credited to Buffett with no source given. Buffett’s letter says 30 minutes, not “half an hour”; contains no “still”; and says “in the game,” with poker named only in his lead-in outside the quotation marks.

Amarillo Slim commonly credited

The saying is often pinned on the poker champion Amarillo Slim. Quote Investigator ↗ records that when Slim used it in 2005 he pointed to Buffett and “a million other fellows” rather than claiming it as his own.

Buffett genuinely wrote the sentence, in the Chairman’s Letter dated 29 February 1988 ↗ — but he wrote it as a quotation. The proverb behind it was in print by 1979, and Quote Investigator ↗ has identified no one who coined it.

Context

Why it mattered

The sentence is the sting in the tail of Buffett’s most-quoted passage: his retelling of Ben Graham’s “Mr. Market” parable, in which the stock market is an obliging business partner who turns up every day with a new price and takes no offence when you ignore him. Buffett’s point is that Mr. Market is there to serve you, not to instruct you. The line immediately before the poker proverb makes the stakes plain — if you aren’t certain you can value the business better than Mr. Market can, you don’t belong in the game.

It travelled fast. Quote Investigator ↗ documents a long excerpt of the letter appearing in the New York Times on 5 April 1988, and the saying being circulated again as a freestanding quotation on 10 April 1988. Detached from the letter, it lost the four words that mattered most for attribution: “As they say in poker.”

Buffett put the line in quotation marks. Almost everyone who has repeated it since has taken them off.

The poker-free variants

Quote Investigator notes that variants which drop the poker framing altogether are now in circulation — versions about meetings, negotiations, or business generally. Those are further from Buffett’s text again: his sentence names no card game at all inside the quotation marks, because the lead-in (“As they say in poker”) already supplied the setting.

The 1979 book that carries the earliest currently known printed version, The Aggressive Conservative Investor by Martin J. Whitman and Martin Shubik, sets it as a freestanding epigraph and labels it simply POKER PROVERB — an author-free credit that is, so far, the honest one.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Humility Doubt

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Look Around the Poker Table; If You Can't See the Sucker, You're Itquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Concludes Buffett popularized but did not create the aphorism, and lays out four 1979 attestations as the earliest currently known.
Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters archiveberkshirehathaway.com

Berkshire's own free archive of the letters from 1977 to 2024, including the 1987 letter in which this line appears.
Warren Buffett on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Carries the quotation in its sourced Letters to Shareholders section, cited to the 1987 Chairman's Letter.
ADS-L: "If after ten minutes at the poker table you do not know who the patsy is"listserv.linguistlist.org

The American Dialect Society list thread behind the QI article, giving the 1979 Whitman & Shubik citation with page and publisher.
Warren Buffetten.wikipedia.org

Biography: born 30 August 1930 in Omaha; led Berkshire Hathaway from 1970 and stepped down as CEO in 2026, staying on as chairman.

About the author

Who was writing

Warren Buffett

b. 1930 · American investor & chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

Warren Edward Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska on 30 August 1930 and built Berkshire Hathaway into one of the world’s largest conglomerates, leading it from 1970 onward and stepping down as chief executive in 2026 while remaining chairman. He is the most-quoted living exponent of value investing, the discipline he learned from Benjamin Graham. His annual shareholder letters — plain-spoken, joke-studded, and published free on Berkshire’s own website — are the source of a large share of the aphorisms the internet credits to him, which is precisely why so many uncredited ones get pinned on him too.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Buffett, Warren E. “Chairman’s Letter — 1987.” Berkshire Hathaway Inc., dated February 29, 1988. https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1987.html. On the underlying poker proverb, whose earliest currently known appearances are dated 1979, see Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Look Around the Poker Table; If You Can’t See the Sucker, You’re It,” July 9, 2011.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If you've been in the game 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-youve-been-in-the-game-30-minutes-and-you-dont-know-who/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied