diff --git a/README.textile b/README.textile
index 699b29e6a905b..bf2a96b003cbd 100644
--- a/README.textile
+++ b/README.textile
@@ -191,7 +191,7 @@ h3. Distributed, Highly Available
 
 Let's face it, things will fail....
 
-Elasticsearch is a highly available and distributed search engine. Each index is broken down into shards, and each shard can have one or more replicas. By default, an index is created with 5 shards and 1 replica per shard (5/1). There are many topologies that can be used, including 1/10 (improve search performance), or 20/1 (improve indexing performance, with search executed in a map reduce fashion across shards).
+Elasticsearch is a highly available and distributed search engine. Each index is broken down into shards, and each shard can have one or more replicas. By default, an index is created with 1 shard and 1 replica per shard (1/1). There are many topologies that can be used, including 1/10 (improve search performance), or 20/1 (improve indexing performance, with search executed in a map reduce fashion across shards).
 
 In order to play with the distributed nature of Elasticsearch, simply bring more nodes up and shut down nodes. The system will continue to serve requests (make sure you use the correct http port) with the latest data indexed.