The saying about writing content for people and not engines, is also beneficial because of the fact it generally holds value. That means it'll most likely gain natural links while the other version may just seem spammy (usually high keyword density which can actually be annoying reading)
There's no reason not to include a keyword here and there in your copy, but for god sake, make it make sense and seem natural. For the trained eye it's extremely easy to spot if text is written for engines or people
EDIT: I realize the point of bigge's post wasn't to focus on the markup but on the order of lists etc. vs. text (content), but the <table> code does seem a bit outdated. The engines will pick it up regardless, but it's better to build sites using CSS (div structure). Tables are meant for tabular data, not for site structure
Also, a good idea is to include a couple of <h> tags. It will help theme your site. However, use with caution. I've seen countless of sites overdo it