A Powerball player in Arkansas won a $1.817 billion jackpot on Wednesday on the heels of the Christmas holiday, ending the lottery game’s three-month stretch without a top-prize winner.

The winning numbers were 04, 25, 31, 52, and 59, with the Powerball number being 19.

The prize, which was the fourth-largest US lottery jackpot in history, followed 46 consecutive drawings in which no one matched all six numbers. The last drawing with a jackpot winner was Sept. 6, when players in Missouri and Texas won $1.787 billion.

The last time someone won a Powerball jackpot on Christmas Eve was in 2011, Powerball said. The company added that the sweepstakes also has been won on Christmas Day four times, most recently in 2013.

Powerball’s odds of 1 in 292.2 million are designed to generate big jackpots, with prizes growing as they roll over when no one wins. Lottery officials note that the odds are far better for the game’s many smaller prizes.

The estimated $1.7 billion jackpot goes to a winner who opts to receive 30 payments over 29 years through an annuity. However, winners almost always choose the game’s cash option, which for Wednesday night’s drawing would be an estimated $735.3 million, before taxes.

Powerball tickets cost $2, and the game is offered in 45 states plus Washington, DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

The United States' 4th-largest jackpot on record comes after 46 consecutive draws without someone claiming to have all six numbers. The last contest with a jackpot winner was on Sept. 6. The game’s long odds have people decking the halls and doling out $2 — and sometimes more — for tickets.

Chris Winters, a glass artist in Indianapolis, said Wednesday: “With the prize so high, I just bought one kind of impulsively. Why not?”

It's a sign the game is operating as intended. Lottery officials made the odds tougher in 2015 as a mechanism for snowballing jackpots, all the while making it easier to win smaller prizes.

It’s hard to explain what odds of 1 in 292.2 million mean. Even if halved, they remain difficult to digest.

In the past, one math professor described the odds of flipping a coin and getting heads 28 straight times.

Tim Chartier, a Davidson College math professor in North Carolina, on Monday compared the odds of a winning lottery ticket to selecting one marked dollar bill from a stack 19 miles (31 kilometers) high.

“It’s true that if you buy 100 tickets, you are 100 times more likely to win. But in this case, ‘100 times more likely’ barely moves the probability needle,” Chartier said. “Using the time analogy, buying 100 tickets is like getting 100 guesses to name that one chosen second over nine years. Possible — but wildly improbable.”

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