[Kalimac]

What Saucepan and Squatter said.

Also would like to add that in some ways Bilbo's later deeds are really enhanced by the fact that he's completely unprepared for this sort of life and doesn't know the first thing about it - yet somehow he manages to draw on himself and do necessary things that certain other, far-more-used-to-adventuring groups hadn't quite caught onto. Bilbo doesn't know any of their histories or relations between Elves and Dwarves, etc, aside from what he picks up in scraps here and there from the Dwarves, yet somehow at the end he manages to pull all his information together and make a pretty reasonable hypothesis about what actions will avert disaster - and then he goes and actually does it! Basically he comes into the world as ignorant of it as a newborn, and in less than a year he's up there with the best of them strategically. That's quite a handicap to overcome, and he did it marvelously. He deserves every bit of what he gets.