Her first ever $1 online lottery bet won a $1.94 million jackpot

Donna Gray of Mount Pleasant had bought scratch-offs for years but had never tried the North Carolina lottery's online games. Her first ever play, a $1 bet on the PowerMax Cash Digital Instant game on August 1, won a $1,939,727 jackpot, the NC Education Lottery said. 

“It started rolling and just kept rolling,” Gray said. She figured it would be something like $100. Her husband didn't believe her at first, and she said it took them both a couple of days to accept it. She claimed the prize on October 27 at lottery headquarters and plans to invest it.

The lottery puts the odds of that jackpot at 1 in 150 million. That is about half the chance of hitting the Powerball jackpot with one ticket, 1 in 292.2 million, by the game's official odds.

PowerMax Cash takes bets from 50 cents to $50, and about 1 in 3.73 plays wins some prize, the lottery's game list shows. The jackpot grows as people play, and on the morning of October 29 it stood at just over $337,000. The lottery groups PowerMax Cash with King Kong Jackpots under a shared jackpot it calls Rocket Jackpots, and both list the same 1-in-150-million top odds. During set Power Hours, the game's Power Jackpot and Boost Jackpot combine.

North Carolina's 89 Digital Instant games are sold only on the lottery's website and app. Sixteen of them are tied to progressive jackpots, and PowerMax Cash and King Kong Jackpots have the longest odds of the group. The next longest, Pantheon of Olympus: Tides and two other Legendary Jackpots games, list about 1 in 64.6 million, and the daily Bigfoot Bucks jackpot is 1 in 500,000. The full list is on our North Carolina online games page, and our state-by-state guide covers where online instants are sold.

Sources

NC Education Lottery: Beginner's luck lands Cabarrus County woman a $1,939,727 jackpot

NC Education Lottery: Digital Instants

Powerball: Prize chart and odds