Most of them purposely gimp themselves by running in 4:3. I've watched major tournament losses due to pro players not being able to spot someone they would if they were running widescreen.

The reason they run 4:3 on 16:9 monitors is to stretch the horizontal and make their targets effectively larger on their screen.

Obviously that comes with downsides as you mention.

Most pros don’t actually stretch their screen. They just run letterbox. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UaM765-S515ibLyPaBtM...

i'm kind of surprised this isn't considered cheating. It's effectively zooming in.

Don't you think pros would run widescreen if it was an actual advantage?

One would think.

I didn't say refresh rate didn't matter. Buy buying a new CRT in the late 90s with a slightly better refresh rate isn't going to be much of an advantage.

The difference was pretty drastic. My NEC FP2141SB in the early 2000s ran 1280x1024 @ 100hz, those Diamondtron/Tronitron tubes were next-level for their time even though they were super finicky.

Yeah the range of CRT quality was huge and visible. Those were a type of product where price actually correlated to quality. With an LCD you could pay $1000 for a "gaming" model and still get something that has basic issues like high input lag or strong overshoot. With CRT it meant the screen is now flat, the image is now bigger than 17", and the focus is now sharper.