Erigaisi wastes no time in immediately moving his pawn up the board. While this plan takes time, his h-pawn will now be a thorn in MVL's position that may give him attacking chances later down the line.
While MVL has no objective issues in this position, there's no doubt that Erigaisi stands practically better as a result of the opening. His space advantage and control over the dark squares may give his pieces ample opportunity to infiltrate MVL's position at a later stage.
Erigaisi avoids castling, instead getting his king centralized from the get-go. Erigaisi remains with the superior position with a favorable pawn structure, but breaking through will prove difficult.
Despite Erigaisi's practical advantage due to his superior pawn structure, MVL has managed to stabilize the position and prevented MVL from breaking through on the queenside.
Pressure is mounting on Erigaisi, who has to take drastic measures to try to create chances for himself.
Erigaisi is still no closer to creating a dangerous initiative on the queenside. While he has the potential to go for a pawn break, this comes at the consequence of allowing MVL's rook into the game.
While Erigaisi still is nowhere close to gaining a winning advantage, he still maintains his clear advantage on the clock. Erigaisi's strategy revolves around stalling for as long as possible before making a committal decision, hoping to win the game on time.
Erigaisi finally breaks open the position, changing the structure on the queenside. MVL is still down on time, but he is not yet in any danger on the board.
MVL goes wrong, allowing Erigaisi to break through on the kingside!
Erigaisi messes up the move order, and MVL now has a way to defend against Erigaisi's threats on the kingside!
Erigaisi successfully breaks through in the center, and the pawns on the kingside pose very dangerous threats for MVL! MVL is now objectively losing, and will have to rely on a blunder by Erigaisi to stay in this game!
Erigaisi uses the time to his advantage and wins the Armageddon decider! Using his extra time to his advantage, Erigaisi decided to keep the position calm for a very long time in order to shave off time from MVL's clock.
After shuffling for tens of moves without any progress, Erigaisi finally went for the only active plan in the position, opening up the queenside. While the resulting position should still have been under control for MVL, Erigaisi managed to trick the Frenchman into going for the wrong defensive posture, allowing Erigaisi to finally create dangers on the kingside.
His initiative eventually became too much for MVL to handle with such little time on the clock, and the game reached its natural conclusion after Erigaisi successfully managed to create an unstoppable threat with his pawn. Erigaisi thus advances to the final bracket, while MVL will fight for his life in the lower bracket final.