If you needed a cheapish monitor for gaming...

Well that's not much of a decision considering the CRT is smaller than the LCD. Keep in mind that the dimensions of a CRT include the border around the screen, while the LCD dimensions are only the actual screen ("viewable area" ). Now, if you had put a 19" CRT flatscreen in there, then I might give the CRT consideration; CRTs are still superior when it comes to fast motion in games, but you have to judge for yourself whether you can tell.

You could always consider a much less expensive used CRT in your area from http://geo.craigslist.org/iso/gb
I'd recommend a Sony Trinitron or NEC Diamondtron monitor 19" or higher.

Turning v-sync off will not affect (speed up) your refresh rate more than what your monitor is running at. Basically it is like this:
Let's say your monitor is running at 60Hz. That means 60 times a second the monitor receives a picture from the video card no matter what. However, sometimes your video card may be too slow to rendering an entire full screen 3d picture each time a picture is sent to your card. So..., the video card instead, sends the same picture to the monitor until it has time to finish rendering the scene. Depending on how bad your frame rates are, this can take as little as 2 frames or several frames till it's done. However, if you turn v-sync off, the video card will then send whatever part of the pictures is done to the monitor 60 times a second. If, the framerates are real bad, you may notice certain parts of the screen are off from the others, because the card was only able to finish part of the screen. So... you are still stuck with the limit of your monitor. Turning off v-sync may only help slightly with a slightly sluggish video card or a fast card that sometimes can't render some frames in one pass.