Reading the docs and the mailing lists, I had gathered that postgres favours smaller indices during query optimization as compared to smaller ones. However, I do not see that behaviour and would like to know if I am misinterpreting how postgres processes the queries.
I have a very simple setup. I have one table with ~65000 tuples consuming ~8500 pages (reltuples and relpages as per pg_class). I have defined two indices on table, t1_id1 which indexes "t1(id1)" which consumes 194 pages; and t1_id1_v1 which indexes "t1(id1) where id1=9999" which consumes 4 pages. When I run an "explain select * from t1 where id1=9999;" it chooses to index-scan the t1_id1 index instead of t1_id1_v1 index, even though that the where-clause uses an equal comparison and there is a smaller index defined on t1 limited to the value of id1 to 9999.
My database is running on an x86_64 dual-processor platform with about 1G given to postgres as shared memory and sequential-scan turned off. I have already run an "analyze verbose" on the table.