Me Being a Weak Mouse

This hands been bugging me for awhile. I played it weakly the whole way through and playing anything weakly is wrong unless its practically unbeatable.

I limped with Jack-Ten in late position. The flop was 9-8-T, giving me an open ended straight draw with top pair. I bet out the size of the pot, $8. I got one caller, then a raiser who made it $16 total. I called the $8 more as did the previous caller. The turn was a 3. The check-raiser checked, as did I. The caller went all-in for about $40. The check-raiser called. I knew the check-raiser had the same exact hand as me, Jack-10. I then folded. My logic was that I was risking $40 to, at best, split the $56 from the 3rd player in the hand.

I always say that playing great poker is being able to win pots in which you have the same hand as an opponent. The only way to do this is to be aggressive. I've been able to do this with hands like Ace-King, Ace-Queen, Ace-Jack, and even once with Queen-Ten against a calling station.

With the Jack-Ten situation, here's what I should have done. Since I knew my pair of tens were good, and I was up against the same hand, I could have won the pot by being aggressive. Instead, I lost $16 cuz I was too passive.

No matter what the river was, I can go all-in and win the pot. If we both hit our straight, I'll get a call. If we both hit trips or two pair, I get a call. Even if he calls me with just a pair of 10s with a Jack kicker, we still split up $56 between us, or $28 a piece. If he folds, the $56 from the 3rd player, along with the $16 from the other guy with Jack-Ten comes my way at the end of the hand.

There's no way he'd be able to call an all-in from a player as tight as me. Even though the move is a ludicrous overbet, which might give him reason to call, with my reputation (the guy had played with me for 6 hours at this point so he knew how tight was), I don't see how he could call. At that point, I had about $270 in chips in front of me. He had more, but it would have been a big blow to his stack. He simply couldn't call the bet. Nor could he re-raise it, obviously.

By folding, I lost $16 on the hand. Had I called the all-in on the turn, then pushed all-in on the river against the same hand, I would have profited $72. Once again, I wasn't the lion at the table I'd like to be, I was a fucking mouse.