Hinting in Postgres (blog.2ndquadrant.com)

TL;DR Hinting is more trouble than it's worth. Look at these instead:

  join_collapse_limit
  random_page_cost
  work_mem
  OFFSET 0
  enable_seqscan, enable_indexscan, enable_bitmapscan
  enable_nestloop, enable_hashjoin, enable_mergejoin
  enable_hashagg, enable_material
  cursor_tuple_fraction