More than 10,000 players traveled to Las Vegas this past July to compete in the Main Event of the 2024 World Series of Poker. Jordan Griff, a business insights lead for supply chain planning at Meta, was just one of them — at least at the start.
Over the course of 12 days and more than 90 hours of play, Griff ended up taking home $6 million as the tournament's runner-up, outlasting a field chock full of poker professionals and fellow amateurs to etch his name in the sport’s history.
Griff’s poker career didn’t start this past summer, however. In fact, the former supply chain analyst and strategy manager at PepsiCo.’s rise in the poker world has run parallel to his journey in supply chain management.
The road to the Main Event
The New York native attended Arizona State University to, as he puts it, get away from the cold, earning his bachelor’s degree in supply chain management and marketing in 2016 before joining Pepsi. His attraction to the profession, particularly procurement, started with his childhood fascination with buying and selling sports cards, video games and anything else he could get his hands on.
After college, Griff moved to Illinois and then New York over a nearly five-year run with Pepsi, most recently serving as strategy associate manager of supply chain NPI until 2021.
Eventually, Griff sought a new challenge beyond the more established supply chain of the beverage giant. That led him to the technology sector, specifically Meta. When he joined what was then Facebook in its Reality Labs division — the unit responsible for the company’s virtual and augmented reality products — in 2021, Griff found himself working with “a much newer supply chain.”
“It wasn’t as easy to say the forecast at this point in time was the issue, or the supply at this point in time was an issue,” Griff told Supply Chain Dive in an interview. “So there’s a lot of longer range planning that goes on, and a lot of assumptions, as opposed to clear cut data.”
Joining Meta brought Griff to the Bay Area and eventually back to Arizona. As he moved across the country, he continued to pursue his passion for poker, playing as much as once a week depending on how close he was to a casino.
“[I] kept being able to move up in stakes and be profitable and get to a point where I felt confident playing the main event and felt that, you know, I had a chance to do well,” Griff said.
Griff said he had previously won money in a World Series circuit event when he was living in Illinois. Then, last year, he made the final table — the last group of players left in a tournament — at another circuit event in San Jose, California.
“[I] kept being able to move up in stakes and be profitable and get to a point where I felt confident playing the main event and felt that, you know, I had a chance to do well."
Jordan Griff
Business Insights Lead (Supply Chain Planning), Meta
As he made a name for himself at the circuit level, Griff entered his first Main Event in 2022. He only lasted about four hours, getting bounced by a three of a kind. But he came back the next year and lasted two days.
“I felt like I was playing really well and got good table draws, where I’m like, I definitely have an edge against these guys, and I should be playing this,” Griff said.
From surviving to thriving
Griff returned this summer and made it a whole lot further than two days, playing all the way to the very end. The tournament, which was spread over 12 days for Griff, is a grueling marathon. Most playing days go from about 12 p.m. to 12 a.m., with 15-minute breaks every two hours and a 75-minute break for dinner, according to Griff.
To compete at a high level over such a long period of time each day, Griff remained focused on his strategy, regardless of the ebbs and flows of his chip count.
“I usually play a pretty aggressive style, and I like to be betting, and like to be in control of the pots,” Griff said. “I like to try and control the dynamics of the game if I can.”
In many ways, some of the skills Griff utilizes in his day job aid him at the poker table. He says he adjusts his game to how the table is playing to ensure he understands the dynamics working for and against him.
“What are my stack sizes, especially in the tournaments, what are other people playing?” Griff said. “And what are the other plate leaders noticing? And really trying to adjust and see in that moment, what makes the best sense, rather than trying to rely on something very static in terms of a strategy?”
For Griff, the grind also became an exercise in daily planning. Having only reserved hotels for the first five or six days, as he got deeper into the tournament, his routine changed.
“Each day became wake up, get breakfast, buy clothes, hotel for the night, and then go over and play poker,” Griff said.
That skin-of-his-teeth mentality carried over to the table. At the end of day four of the Main Event, Griff lost 75% of his chips, putting him in survival mode.
“Each day became wake up, get breakfast, buy clothes, hotel for the night, and then go over and play poker."
Jordan Griff
Business Insights Lead (Supply Chain Planning), Meta
However, after outracing a pair of threes on a strenuous pre-flop all-in (betting all your chips to start a hand) with a pair of queens on day eight, Griff began catapulting himself toward the top of the leaderboard, ultimately securing a spot at the final table. Once the tournament reached that stage, the competitors were given a day’s respite, during which Griff was inundated with phone calls and text messages from friends and family.
The final table played out over two days, according to Griff, during which he hit on dramatic hands such as squashing a straight with quad fives (four of a kind) and using trip nines (three of a kind) to eliminate the tournament’s third-place finisher. However, his run came just short when his pair of nines lost to eventual champion Jonathan Tamayo’s two-pair on the final hand of the tournament.
Although the final result has been mired in some controversy, Griff doesn’t hold any ill will. Instead, he remains grateful for his incredible run.
“The greatest experience may have not even been being at the final table, but just getting together a group of friends and family and sharing that with them,” Griff said.
Despite raking in $6 million from his showing in the Main Event, Griff hasn’t drastically altered his life. He admits that he and his wife — who are expecting their first child this year — have certainly benefited from the financial stability, but aside from some purchases around the house, they haven’t splurged all that much. Instead, Griff is back to work in the supply chain world while playing poker in his off time.
“I like my job right now, so, like, I haven’t thought about quitting it,” Griff said, reiterating how many of the skills required to be good at poker are transferable to the supply chain planning profession. “So I always loved the game of poker, and if I were to make that my main source of income and I rely on that, it would ruin the game for me.”
