When I do `dbcc show_statistics ('Reports_Documents', PK_Reports_Documents)` I get the following result for Report ID 18698: ![enter image description here][1] For this query: SELECT * FROM Reports_Documents WHERE ReportID = 18698 option(recompile) I get a query plan that makes a Clustered Index Seek on `PK_Reports_Documents` as expected. But what baffles me is the incorrect value for Estimated Number of Rows: ![enter image description here][2] According to [this][3]: > When the sample query WHERE clause value is equal to a histogram > RANGE_HI_KEY value, SQL Server will use the EQ_ROWS column in the > histogram to determine the number of rows that are equal to <your value> This is also the way I would expect it to be, however it seems not to be the case in real life. I also tried some other `RANGE_HI_KEY` values that were present in the histogram provided by `show_statistics` and experienced the same. This issue in my case seems to cause some queries to very unoptimal execution plans resulting in an execution time of a few minutes whereas I can get it to run in 1 sec with a query hint. All in all: Can someone explain me why is `EQ_ROWS` from the histogram not being used for the Estimated Number of Rows and where does the incorrect estimate come from? A bit more (possibly helpful) info: * Auto create statistics is on and all the statistics are up to date. * The table being queried has about 80 million rows. The table I am querying has about 80 million rows, auto statistics is [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/sdiDW.png [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/Srdiq.png [3]: http://blogs.technet.com/b/mspfe/archive/2013/04/18/understanding-sql-server-cardinality-estimations-by-charting-histogram-to-actual-values.aspx