so recently started a go club teaching some kids. and they really want to know their ranks.

whats the best way to decide their ranks? problems?

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No! Playing with someone who knows their own rank - it might be you, or it might be online. Once 2 or 3 people know their rank, the rest can find theirs by playing handicap games.

Here is my take on this, just to purely want to know play strength of a player, I would rather leave this tedious job to robot.

I think right now the easiest and best way to do this is at DGS. You can assign homework to kids and help them sign up account at DGS using any browser.
From here, follow this guidelines to play several rated or unrated games against robots at DGS for the kids as homework:

How to Use Bots to Quickly Adjust Rank
http://www.dragongoserver.net/forum/rea ... read=49082

DGS list of robots rank from 28k to 6 dan. The focus for the kids (beginner, I guess) should be simplebot and michibot. 1 kyu roughly equal to 1 stone of handicap. They all allow 9 stone handicap maximum for a game. DGS robots that I operate usually respond to a move in couple of minutes, and at kids pace of will.
They should be able know roughly their rank with just a couple of game against multiple bots. They probably need to play couple of days to a week to obtain their real accurate rank on their accounts at DGS.

After obtaining the assessment of DGS rank, they can use this guide to get equivalent rank worldwide in all different servers or for ranks in East Asia:


http://senseis.xmp.net/?RankWorldwideComparison

By the way, I guess playing with bots at KGS is also available. I have not played at KGS for a quite a while.
KGS bots come and go, not clear which one is available for play actively.

Kids are super active, just give a warning to them that DGS is turn based server, only do 1 move per minute per game.
They can do multiple games simultaneously though. Play too frequently like in KGS, they could get banned in DGS for a day quickly.