Getting the Powerball Number on Your Ticket Isn't a Bad Roll — Here's What You Could Win

The gist:

• If you only match the red Powerball number on your $2 lottery ticket, you win $4.
• If you match two numbers on your ticket, you win $7.
• Once you match three or more numbers, the amount of money you can win escalates substantially, even if you don't win the jackpot.

Let's face it. We all have fantasies of winning the lottery and being able to earn enough money to solve all our problems and financial woes in one fell swoop. So every now and then, we may just take a shot at the Powerball just to see if our luck can pay off. With mounting jackpots having reached over a billion dollars in the past, even folks who have never played the Powerball before would be tantalized enough to test their luck on a ticket and fulfill those lofty lottery fantasies.

But if you've never played the Powerball before, you may be surprised at just how many opportunities there are to win. Sure, you only get the big jackpot by matching all of the numbers on your ticket on a given week, but that doesn't mean that you should completely throw away your ticket if they don't all match. When it comes to the Powerball number itself, even that ends up being worth a little something. What exactly happens if you get the Powerball number, though? Here's what you should know.

The rules of Powerball are pretty straightforward but have their complexities as well. You spend $2 on your lottery ticket and you can either choose your five numbers (1 through 69) or let the lottery terminal choose them for you, and then you choose a number between 1 and 26 for that red Powerball number.

Then every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, you can tune in to watch every Powerball drawing (or look up the results on the internet) to see if your ticket wins.

As you might expect, matching all of the numbers and the Powerball number earns you the current jackpot, which grows with every week that it goes unearned. However, there's still value with matching just the Powerball number.

If you roll the Powerball number by itself, for instance, you automatically win $4. It isn't much, but it's at least a net gain from what you would have spent on a regular ticket. You can even use any number of Power Play multipliers to increase your winnings.

As you might expect, there are still chances to win if you match other numbers as well.

Powerball actually has an entire chart where you can look up what you can look up the various prices you can earn from matching just a few of the Powerball numbers on a given drawing.

For example, matching two numbers and the Powerball number nets you $7. Matching three numbers and the Powerball number can earn you $100 to start. Matching 5 numbers without the Powerball still pays out a substantial prize of $1 million, and all that is without Power Play multipliers.

Naturally, few prizes are as coveted as the actual Powerball jackpot. But depending on how many numbers you do end up matching and the way you play, you may still be able to win big.