Q-gap = max_a Q(s,a) - mean_a Q(s,a): measures action preference per state.
Q-var = Var_s[Q(s,a)]: measures state differentiation across the batch.
Both are 0.0000 through all 10 smoketest epochs despite Sharpe 8+ and
Q-values growing to 0.012. This proves the good metrics are from
reward-induced mechanical bias, NOT learned Q-values.
Also: c51_warmup_epochs=0 (C51 from step 1, bypass MSE dead zone),
smoketest lr=1e-4 (50× higher, makes 40 steps representative).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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