We have introduced the weight of a group which has a presentation with number of relations is at most the number of generators. We have shown that the number of facets of any contracted pseudotriangulation of a connected closed 3-manifold M is at least the weight of the fundamental group of M . This lower bound is sharp for the 3-manifolds RP, L(3, 1), L(5, 2), S1 × S1 × S1, S2 × S1, S×− S1 and...