re: pros playing
Pros are pros. This is how they make their living, so they play wherever and on whatever they need to, whether they like it or not. I'm sure there are some that stayed away because of the equipment, but I doubt most care. They want to win. Hell, I've never turned down a game just because of the equipment and I enjoy playing on whatever I can get, but it's sorta' not the point.
When I was a kid, and we still had lots of nice pool halls around, pool on TV, etc, I always thought it would be fun to do a "Basement Series". Setup some crappy, 7' tables, each one with odd idiosyncrasies, put some walls too close to the table, maybe a couple of posts, house cues only, etc etc, and let them battle it out. The really adaptable guys would find a way to use the equipment to their advantage, hook people in areas where they can't even make a proper stroke, and things like that. It would be fun.
This isn't quite what I had in mind, though.