Funny, I was watching ESPN 2005 WSOP a little last night ... and either Howard Lederer is a great actor for the cameras or he was seriously annoyed by nobodies playing back at him.

What internet poker teaches you is that a bluff is not a lie, it's just a play. There's no reason to be nervous about it. So I think that Pros don't expect big moves with crap from unknowns - EVEN THOUGH THEY KNOW THAT MUCH OF THE TIME they are being bluffed. Since they are typically agressive, making moves with not much - they often don't have the cards to call down.

The other thing to consider is this. Since the number of players has exploded (particularly in NL) - there is what biologists might call a "purifying selection". You have 100,000 random joes (and janes!) trying their hand at poker. Some of them are going to turn out to be naturally talented at it - even if 99.99% of them are donks - it's that last .01% who end up in the WSOP.

As a (flawed) analogy - major league baseball in 1955. Jackie Robinson breaks the color barrier in 1947. Now an additional 1/5th of the population is added to the talent pool. Poker is much worse. The talent pool is probably 100 or 1000 times larger than it was in 1995.

As an aside - playing your gutshots and sets the same way is probably +EV. However, I would like to get called down playing a set this way first...