Fourth largest jackpot in Powerball history exceeds a billion dollars.

GREENVILLE, N.C. (WITN) - The prize for the Powerball jackpot reached 1.04 billion dollars on Monday and lottery players can gamble a couple of dollars to brave long odds for the world’s ninth-largest prize in lottery history.

Gas stations and stores selling lottery tickets are seeing an influx of buyers throughout the day and each buyer has a unique reason that brings them in, some say just playing the lottery means helping kids because the money goes to education.

“They want to go get like nice jobs and do anything like that,” said lottery player Annlecce Alston, “If I’m helping them pay for their education, they can go out and get that.”

It’s been more than two months since there was a Powerball jackpot winner, making the chances of winning as slim as 1 in 292.2 million - but that is not stopping the ticket sales.

Terry Hemby. another buyer said, “You got to test your luck when the jackpot is that big. You got to.”

Numbers can be chosen by the player themselves or selected by the computer.

The winner can receive the winnings through an annuity over 30 years or take a cash lump sum of about $478.2 million.

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