Here's an example, for one:

http://css-tricks.com/centering-in-the-unknown/

(talks about a CSS/divs solution, but as it mentions there are differences between the two). In general if you're dealing with a design that involves centering something with a dynamic size vertically, or one which involves having the height or width of two dynamic elements add up to the width of a third adjacent element (ie. "rowspan" and "colspan" in table-speak), there's a decent possibility that using a table might just be the least-hacky way to implement something. Bearing in mind that hackiness is a bit subjective :)