You're right that Tetris Worlds came out in 2001, and was the first instance of the guideline we know today. I was referring to the bit in article here:
> Later in 2003, I received a message from Henk Rogers, inviting me to Hawaii to meet him and Alexey Pajitnov to talk about establishing some sort of standard for Tetris, for the purposes of having Tetris tournaments.
What's fair to say, though, is that although there's technically overlap on the timeline, he would've most certainly been more familiar with the myriad of Tetris games that predated the guideline. Tetris Worlds came out two years before his article, and at that point, nobody really even knew there was a guideline.
> Later in 2003, I received a message from Henk Rogers, inviting me to Hawaii to meet him and Alexey Pajitnov to talk about establishing some sort of standard for Tetris, for the purposes of having Tetris tournaments.
What's fair to say, though, is that although there's technically overlap on the timeline, he would've most certainly been more familiar with the myriad of Tetris games that predated the guideline. Tetris Worlds came out two years before his article, and at that point, nobody really even knew there was a guideline.